Ali considers T&T for refining of Guyana oil

An­drea Perez-Sobers

The prospect of Guyanese crude be­ing re­fined in Trinidad and To­ba­go has emerged as the cor­ner­stone of a high-stakes en­er­gy blue­print un­veiled by Guyana’s Pres­i­dent, Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali.

Propos­ing a po­ten­tial re­ac­ti­va­tion of idle re­fin­ing ca­pac­i­ty, Ali con­firmed his in­ten­tion to en­gage the T&T Gov­ern­ment di­rect­ly on a col­lab­o­ra­tion that would see Guyana’s raw re­sources fu­el Trinida­di­an in­fra­struc­ture. This strate­gic shift aims to trans­form lega­cy in­dus­tri­al as­sets in­to a re­gion­al mon­eti­sa­tion en­gine, sig­nalling a move away from in­de­pen­dent op­er­a­tions to­wards a deeply in­te­grat­ed down­stream part­ner­ship.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, as well as to a room of top busi­ness stake­hold­ers and bankers at the an­nu­al busi­ness meet­ing and out­look for 2026/2027 host­ed by the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce at the Hy­att Re­gency on Fri­day, Ali framed this in­te­gra­tion as a non-ne­go­tiable re­sponse to a shift­ing glob­al mar­ket.

He ar­gued that the era of hes­i­ta­tion must end, as the eco­nom­ic cost of de­lay grows in­creas­ing­ly steep, call­ing for a dis­ci­plined, pri­vate-sec­tor-led in­te­gra­tion of cross-bor­der gas and re­fin­ery as­sets.

Cen­tral to this blue­print is the po­ten­tial re­ac­ti­va­tion of T&T’s idle re­fin­ing ca­pac­i­ty to process Guyanese crude.

Ali con­firmed he is pre­pared to en­gage the T&T Gov­ern­ment di­rect­ly to dis­cuss a strat­e­gy that would see Guyanese light sweet crude flow in­to Trinida­di­an re­finer­ies, ef­fec­tive­ly turn­ing a lega­cy in­dus­tri­al bur­den in­to a re­gion­al as­set.

“I will be meet­ing with the gov­ern­ment,” he said when asked di­rect­ly about re­fin­ery col­lab­o­ra­tion.

This move sig­nals a de­par­ture from the “ex­port-on­ly” mod­el, aim­ing in­stead to mon­e­tise re­sources with­in the CARI­COM space to in­su­late the re­gion from glob­al price shocks and sup­ply chain vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties.

The Pres­i­dent’s vi­sion ex­tend­ed be­yond oil, high­light­ing a “cross-bor­der gas ar­chi­tec­ture” de­signed to lead to to­tal re­gion­al en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion. By link­ing the gas re­serves of the Guyana-Suri­name Basin with this coun­try’s es­tab­lished down­stream in­fra­struc­ture, Ali be­lieves the two na­tions could cre­ate a new in­vest­ment cor­ri­dor that com­petes on a glob­al scale. He em­pha­sised that this tran­si­tion can­not be dri­ven by gov­ern­ments alone; it re­quires a pri­vate sec­tor ca­pa­ble of rapid, dis­ci­plined ex­e­cu­tion to cap­i­talise on these new syn­er­gies be­fore the win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty clos­es.

Ali’s will­ing­ness to ex­plore re­fin­ing Guyanese crude in T&T places re­newed fo­cus on the coun­try’s dor­mant re­fin­ery as­sets. While no struc­ture has been fi­nalised, the sig­nal is clear: up­stream growth in Guyana is now large enough to sup­port re­gion­al down­stream in­te­gra­tion.

“The pres­i­dent is con­sid­er­ing in­vest­ing in Trinidad’s re­fin­ery to re­fine some of Guyana’s oil,” he said.

The strate­gic case rests on prox­im­i­ty, ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture, and the po­ten­tial to cre­ate val­ue-added ex­ports rather than raw crude flows, as Ali al­so ac­knowl­edged the struc­tur­al weak­ness­es that have his­tor­i­cal­ly un­der­mined re­fin­ing in the re­gion.

“There is the po­ten­tial for re­fin­ing oil from land; they should al­low it to be what they call the re­fin­ing tragedy. It’s hap­pen­ing now,” he out­lined.

The re­mark un­der­scores a hard re­al­i­ty: re­fin­ing eco­nom­ics are un­for­giv­ing, and with­out scale, ef­fi­cien­cy and con­sis­tent feed­stock, projects fail. Ali’s fram­ing sug­gests that a Guyana–Trinidad link could ad­dress some of those con­straints, but on­ly if ex­e­cut­ed with dis­ci­pline and aligned in­cen­tives.

Cross-bor­der gas must lead

Ali’s ar­gu­ment is not in­cre­men­tal. It is struc­tur­al, as he is push­ing for a re­order­ing of how en­er­gy is pro­duced, moved and mon­e­tised across bor­ders, with gas in­fra­struc­ture act­ing as the an­chor. That ap­proach sits against tight­en­ing glob­al com­pe­ti­tion, where scale, ef­fi­cien­cy and in­te­gra­tion de­ter­mine vi­a­bil­i­ty. In that con­text, he warned that lega­cy think­ing that treats oil and gas as stand­alone ex­port com­modi­ties would not hold.

“We have to have a holis­tic view of the en­er­gy sec­tor. I don’t be­lieve that we should look at en­er­gy in the nar­row form of oil and gas re­fin­ing and sell­ing. We have to look at how we de­ploy our en­er­gy as­sets to build a di­ver­si­fied econ­o­my, to build strong economies, to build more op­por­tu­ni­ties,” Ali stressed.

The pres­i­dent al­so not­ed that this po­si­tion ex­tends to how gas is used—not sim­ply ex­port­ed, but em­bed­ded in­to in­dus­tri­al pol­i­cy, man­u­fac­tur­ing and long-term eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. The log­ic is straight­for­ward: en­er­gy is lever­age, not an end prod­uct.

The im­pli­ca­tion for T&T is im­me­di­ate, he said, with ma­ture gas in­fra­struc­ture but tight­en­ing sup­ply, and Guyana hold­ing rapid­ly ex­pand­ing up­stream re­serves, the align­ment is com­mer­cial­ly ob­vi­ous but po­lit­i­cal­ly and op­er­a­tional­ly com­plex. Ali’s po­si­tion is that the com­plex­i­ty must be con­front­ed, not de­ferred.

“I’m ready. I can say I’m ready. It is need­ed. We all know it is need­ed. It is crit­i­cal­ly need­ed,” he said, ref­er­enc­ing the pro­posed high-lev­el en­gage­ment on cross-bor­der en­er­gy col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Venezuela ten­sion, di­a­logue still on the ta­ble

Ali al­so ad­dressed re­gion­al ten­sions in­volv­ing act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, mak­ing it clear that while geopo­lit­i­cal fric­tion per­sists, di­a­logue re­mains nec­es­sary.

“I be­lieve in di­a­logue. We have ex­plained what the chal­lenge is. The min­is­ter vol­un­teers in the di­a­logue,” he said, adding that en­gage­ment must be struc­tured and time­ly.

The ref­er­ence comes at a mo­ment of height­ened sen­si­tiv­i­ty around cross-bor­der en­er­gy ac­tiv­i­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims. While Ali did not es­ca­late rhetoric, his po­si­tion was firm: is­sues must be ven­ti­lat­ed and ad­dressed di­rect­ly.

“And once those views are ex­pressed and they are ven­ti­lat­ed, the next step is to en­sure that we con­tin­ue that mod­el that brings us clos­er to­geth­er, that al­lows us to lever­age the op­por­tu­ni­ties among each oth­er,” he said.

Pri­vate sec­tor must re-en­gi­neer or fall be­hind

Ali’s most di­rect crit­i­cism was re­served for the re­gion’s pri­vate sec­tor, which he ar­gued has been too com­fort­able op­er­at­ing with­in pro­tect­ed, in­ward-look­ing frame­works.

“If Guyana and T&T must present a part­ner­ship that is mean­ing­ful, that is grip­ping, that is in­no­v­a­tive, and that will pro­pel our peo­ple to high lev­els of pros­per­i­ty, we must have the dis­ci­pline, the com­mit­ment, the ma­tu­ri­ty, and the will to make the changes that are nec­es­sary to ad­vance this agen­da,” he ad­vised.

He point­ed to in­ef­fi­cien­cies that con­tin­ue to un­der­mine com­pet­i­tive­ness, from ba­sic bor­der process­es to en­er­gy pric­ing dis­tor­tions.

“This agen­da can­not be ad­vanced by or­di­nary cit­i­zens spend­ing hours to pass through ba­sic im­mi­gra­tion cus­toms. This part­ner­ship can­not be ad­vanced by com­plain­ing of hav­ing pow­er for in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment at 6 cents per kilo­watt, be­cause it will not be com­pet­i­tive in the re­al world when the av­er­age price is 16 cents per kilo­watt,” Ali ex­plained.

“We have to re-en­gi­neer our busi­ness­es in the re­al world, on the re­al com­pe­ti­tion and the re­al prac­ti­cal busi­ness em­pire,” he said.

Cap­i­tal, strat­e­gy and missed op­por­tu­ni­ties

The pres­i­dent al­so drew a sharp con­trast be­tween how re­source-rich coun­tries de­ploy sov­er­eign wealth and how Caribbean economies have his­tor­i­cal­ly man­aged cap­i­tal. He point­ed to mod­els where en­er­gy rev­enues are used to se­cure long-term strate­gic po­si­tions—whether through glob­al ac­qui­si­tions, in­fra­struc­ture or hu­man cap­i­tal—rather than short-term fis­cal sta­bil­i­sa­tion.

“Take away a few of the large com­pa­nies. Where are our strate­gic in­vest­ments? Where are our strate­gic in­vest­ments that guar­an­tee food se­cu­ri­ty, re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, and re­gion­al cli­mate se­cu­ri­ty? Where are these strate­gic in­vest­ments?” he asked.

The cri­tique ex­tends to missed op­por­tu­ni­ties. He ref­er­enced past of­fers for re­gion­al agri­cul­tur­al in­vest­ment that were not tak­en up, and ques­tioned why cap­i­tal-rich firms did not ex­pand out­ward when con­di­tions were favourable.

“We have so much liq­uid­i­ty in the sys­tem, and still so many of the is­land states are look­ing for cap­i­tal for a long-term pow­er pur­chase agree­ment on re­new­ables,” he said.

Ex­plo­ration con­tin­ues, but in­te­gra­tion is the test

On up­stream ac­tiv­i­ty, Ali con­firmed that ex­plo­ration re­mains ac­tive, with ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers al­ready en­gaged.

“We have ex­plo­ration go­ing on with Qatar En­er­gy, Petronas, and one oth­er en­ti­ty. But right now, ex­plo­ration is on­go­ing,” he said.

But he made it clear that ex­plo­ration alone is not the bench­mark; the test is whether pro­duc­tion trans­lates in­to in­te­grat­ed eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion.

“If you are solv­ing the known, you’re not do­ing any­thing ex­cit­ing. In every equa­tion, solv­ing the un­known is where ex­cite­ment lies,” he said.

He in­di­cat­ed that this ex­tends to trade routes, in­vest­ment pat­terns and in­dus­tri­al pol­i­cy, and that the re­gion has been too slow to piv­ot.

“So we know one trade route all our lives, and we did not ex­am­ine an­oth­er trade route. It’s time for us, maybe, just maybe, to look at all the oth­er di­rec­tions and to see what we can ac­com­plish.”

Fu­ture-proof­ing be­yond sub­si­dies

Ali closed with a warn­ing against pol­i­cy com­pla­cen­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly the re­liance on sub­si­dies as a sub­sti­tute for struc­tur­al re­form.

“We have to fu­ture-proof our economies, and that is why we can fu­ture-proof our econ­o­my by be­liev­ing that sub­si­dies are the an­swer. We have to fu­ture-proof our economies by in­vest­ing in the econ­o­my of the fu­ture,” he said.

That fu­ture, in his view, is an­chored in in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy sys­tems, cross-bor­der in­dus­tri­al link­ages and dis­ci­plined cap­i­tal de­ploy­ment.