MP Lee: 2025 Deepwater Bid Should Have Been Priority Over Venezuelan Gas
The recently reported 2025 Deepwater Bid rounds announced by the Government should have been this administration’s initial focus and priority to address the crippling gas shortage hurting our national energy sector as opposed to the over-reliance on uncertain cross-border Venezuelan gas.
From the start the Opposition has highlighted that this government’s decade of decline in oil and gas production which has driven levels as low as the 1950s has been as a direct failure of the PNM to monetize our in-border gas as they focused on Maduro’s gas fields. We have always said that the key to ending the gas shortage is aggressive exploration of our own oil and gas reserves.
Is it that the government has finally accepted the writing on the wall with the Dragon project uncertainty? Has the failure of Shell to make a Final Investment Decision (FID) on Dragon or concerns of the new US administration’s foreign policy brought this government back to a point of reality?
Deepwater bids and monetization of deep-water gas should have been the focus of this government from their very first term, not in this last hour, months away from a general election. Even if these blocks are taken up by July 2025, we are years away from first gas from these projects, thus it will not immediately end the current gas shortage crisis facing our downstream sector.
The Minister of Energy must give T&T the assurance that this deepwater bid rounds will not end in failure as the 2021/22 bid round when only 4 of the 17 blocks received bids. With 13 of those blocks which failed to attract any bid now included in this round, the Minister of Energy must give the assurance that proper incentives have been implemented to attract the energy companies as failure to do so will simply be “spinning top in mud”, driving us down a path of failure once more.