Moonilal: Energy rebound to fuel T&T growth outlook

PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has said mar­gin­al in­creas­es in oil pro­duc­tion, sta­bilised nat­ur­al gas out­put, and progress on sev­er­al key en­er­gy projects are ex­pect­ed to un­der­pin T&T’s eco­nom­ic growth in 2027.

On Wednes­day, the World Bank, in its re­port en­ti­tled Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean Eco­nom­ic Up­date, stat­ed that T&T’s econ­o­my is ex­pect­ed to grow by 0.7 per cent in 2026 be­fore ac­cel­er­at­ing to 3.2 per cent in 2027.

The re­port not­ed, “Trinidad and To­ba­go—an­oth­er hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­er—ben­e­fits in­ter­mit­tent­ly from gas-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty, but with a more ma­ture pro­duc­tion pro­file and with­out the scale of ex­pan­sion seen in Guyana.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day about the re­port, Mooni­lal said, “It is well es­tab­lished that the en­er­gy sec­tor plays a crit­i­cal role in the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go. As such, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has man­dat­ed us to im­prove hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­tion lev­els, which would ul­ti­mate­ly grow our econ­o­my. We have al­ready achieved mar­gin­al in­creas­es in crude oil pro­duc­tion and sta­bilised nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion.”

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter added, “As a re­sult of en­gage­ments with our up­stream part­ners, we ex­pect sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in new projects to in­crease pro­duc­tion lev­els; some of which have al­ready be­gun to bear fruit, with ma­jor projects like Man­a­tee Plus ex­pect­ed to come on stream in 2027.”

Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus ex­tends be­yond do­mes­tic de­vel­op­ments, not­ing that, in ad­di­tion to pur­su­ing lo­cal projects, ef­forts are al­so be­ing made to di­ver­si­fy the pro­duc­tion base by lever­ag­ing cross-bor­der projects, which are ex­pect­ed to fur­ther bol­ster the econ­o­my.

On Wednes­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed that a del­e­ga­tion would be sent to Venezuela to ne­go­ti­ate en­er­gy deals on T&T’s be­half.

In re­cent weeks, en­er­gy gi­ant Shell said it has been in talks with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing the de­vel­op­ment of gas fields in Venezue­lan wa­ters, in­clud­ing the Drag­on gas field.

Shell has al­so in­di­cat­ed plans to process gas from these fields at Trinidad’s At­lantic LNG fa­cil­i­ty.

In a Reuters re­port on Thurs­day, in­creased in­ter­est in the fa­cil­i­ty has prompt­ed dis­cus­sions on the po­ten­tial restart of At­lantic LNG Train 1, which has been in­ac­tive since 2020 and was moth­balled in 2025, to ac­com­mo­date ad­di­tion­al gas sup­plies from South Amer­i­can fields.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo was al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for com­ment on the World Bank re­port but did not re­spond.

T&T EN­ER­GY OUT­LOOK 2027

• Econ­o­my pro­ject­ed to grow 3.2% in 2027 (World Bank fore­cast)

• Growth dri­ven by en­er­gy sec­tor re­cov­ery and new projects

• Man­a­tee Plus project ex­pect­ed to come on stream

• Nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion sta­bilised, with mod­est oil in­creas­es

• Cross-bor­der gas projects (in­clud­ing Venezuela) un­der ne­go­ti­a­tion

• Po­ten­tial restart of At­lantic LNG Train 1 to process new gas sup­ply

• In­creased up­stream in­vest­ment an­tic­i­pat­ed from en­er­gy part­ners