Last week’s vis­it by US Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau seems to have been pre­cip­i­tat­ed by a “his­toric high” in re­la­tions be­tween his coun­try and ours. He shared these sen­ti­ments at the rib­bon-cut­ting for the Ibis Steel Plant. That plant was first opened in 1980 by IS­COTT and was leased to Caribbean IS­PAT Ltd nine years lat­er. The cen­tre­piece steel plant re­mained as the com­pa­ny re­brand­ed to “Mit­tal Steel” and fi­nal­ly “Arcelor Mit­tal Point Lisas” be­fore it was shut­tered in 2016.

A decade lat­er, the Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion CEO an­nounced an ini­tial in­vest­ment of US$250 mil­lion in the plant, with com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion pro­ject­ed for the end of 2027. How much en­er­gy will this plant re­quire, and from where will it come? This is a ques­tion that has been posed fol­low­ing the MoUs signed for the AI da­ta cen­tres. I am ex­cit­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ties for our na­tion’s de­vel­op­ment, but do we have the re­sources to sus­tain them all?

The in­volve­ment of the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment is re­as­sur­ing. If our 46-year-old steel plant can be retro­fit­ted to pro­duce 50 per cent of US vana­di­um re­quire­ments, there­by elim­i­nat­ing Amer­i­can re­liance on im­ports from Chi­na and Rus­sia, then we have a pow­er­ful part­ner that is very in­vest­ed in Ibis Steel’s suc­cess.

Per­haps the stars are align­ing when act­ing Venezuela Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez an­nounced she had grant­ed a li­cence to an in­ter­na­tion­al con­sor­tium led by BP for phase 2 de­vel­op­ment of their Lo­ran field. This will di­rect an es­ti­mat­ed 7 tcf of nat­ur­al gas to At­lantic LNG’s wait­ing trains. Around 20 per cent of that is ex­pect­ed to be al­lo­cat­ed to our lo­cal in­dus­tri­al feed­stock. Is this a good enough an­swer to the en­er­gy sup­ply ques­tions asked of the an­tic­i­pat­ed vana­di­um plant and da­ta cen­tre projects?

PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced NGC’s ac­qui­si­tion of 20 per cent ac­tive op­er­at­ing in­ter­est in the Man­akin field, which match­es the 20 per cent stake it al­ready has in Cocuina. Twen­ty-five per cent of the gas from the uni­tised Man­akin-Cocuina field is ex­pect­ed to sup­ply our do­mes­tic and in­dus­tri­al con­sump­tion. Is this re­as­sur­ance enough?

Al­so, BP’s ac­qui­si­tion of Wood­side’s in­ter­est brings their op­er­at­ing in­ter­est to 100 per cent of the Ca­lyp­so gas project, which holds an es­ti­mat­ed 4.4 tcf and should fast-track de­vel­op­ment. When will these var­i­ous-sized gold­en geese start lay­ing eggs, though? “2027” keeps re­cur­ring. Per­haps next year is when the “bet­ter days” will come.

Is that soon enough, though? The CSO in­di­cat­ed that our un­em­ploy­ment rate for the first quar­ter of 2026 was 5.4 per cent, the high­est un­der this Gov­ern­ment to date. It stood at 4.9 per cent in the first quar­ter of 2025. Does the pub­lic feel they are bet­ter off to­day than they were a year ago? I know a par­tic­u­lar group of peo­ple who would scream: “Not at all!” I al­so know an­oth­er group who would say: “Ste­ups. You ex­pect the Gov­ern­ment to fix 10 years of fail­ure in 1 year?”

Last week, TTUTA (a union made up of both groups and oth­ers) held a vir­tu­al town hall meet­ing en­ti­tled: “Salary Agree­ment 2020-2023.” With a cou­ple of weeks to go un­til school re­opens, would the TTUTA lead­er­ship risk PDOs by copy­ing PSA protest ac­tion seen out­side WASA last week?

Gov­ern­ment’s en­tan­gle­ment with PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas and WASA em­ploy­ees like Twig­gy seems to be wear­ing thin. Per­haps my for­mer trade union, TTUTA, could learn from the PSA and seek some sort of ac­com­mo­da­tion with the Gov­ern­ment. It worked for the PSA last year. Maybe they will do noth­ing, just like they did last time.

Last week, both unions had Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath as their line min­is­ter. Per­haps Min­is­ter Padarath was able to ad­vance the cause of the teach­ers, as the most high-pro­file all-pur­pose mem­ber of the Cab­i­net.

Con­verse­ly, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has been no­tice­ably ab­sent from a glar­ing num­ber of re­cent en­er­gy-re­lat­ed an­nounce­ments. He sur­faced late last week to con­tra­dict Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein, when he said hun­dreds of acres of for­mer Ca­roni (1975) Ltd lands from St Madeleine to Pic­ton were be­ing cleared for one of the da­ta cen­tres. Min­is­ter Ho­sein had ear­li­er said res­i­den­tial lots were be­ing de­vel­oped there for the for­mer Ca­roni work­ers. So, which is it? The even­tu­al out­come will be quite in­struc­tive. Res­i­dents of near­by Ridge­wood Gar­dens seem most in­ter­est­ed in know­ing which is com­ing but in­di­cat­ed greater con­cern if it was a da­ta cen­tre. Min­is­ter Mooni­lal seemed straight­for­ward in his re­sponse and ex­pect­ed the da­ta cen­tre’s pos­i­tives to pre­vail.

Last week, com­mu­ni­ties in Cou­va, Clax­ton Bay and Cal­i­for­nia were hit by floods, as well as ar­eas in North­west Trinidad. Af­fect­ed cit­i­zens crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to main­tain rivers and wa­ter­cours­es. Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials blamed in­dis­crim­i­nate dump­ing and un­reg­u­lat­ed hous­ing de­vel­op­ments. As I said be­fore, maybe one or two of those da­ta cen­tres in these flood-prone ar­eas might solve that prob­lem through FDI that would ei­ther make full use of the wa­ter or at least en­sure there’s no flood­ing where their as­sets are lo­cat­ed.