36 February 2016 - Business View Caribbean
So, with the world’s growing population needing more
food and energy, there’s going to be a future for the
hydrocarbon sector for many decades.
“I think that there’s a huge challenge of climate change
which the world has to grapple with, but the industry
can be a big part of the solution to the climate change
problem - fuel technologies like carbon capture and
sequestration, which we’re looking at in the country,
and specifically through the ability of the industry to
implement extremely impressive and large engineer-
ing projects. We’re the only industry which can do that.
The many engineering projects which are needed to
go on supplying energy to the world are going to come
from the oil and gas industry.”
Will the Chamber begin to absorb, in its mandate,
more of the alternative energy sector as time goes
on?
“It’s already here. We have a very active renewable en-
ergy and energy efficiency committee within the Cham-
ber and, in the upcoming conference, we have a whole
day devoted to green energy and to renewable energy.
There are significant opportunities in that area, not
just in Trinidad and Tobago, but particularly in the rest
of the Caribbean. The other Caribbean islands are very
reliant upon imported fossil fuels for their electricity
generation and there’s significant potential for them
to, first of all, be more efficient in how they’re using
electricity, and secondly to diversify their fuel mix. And
gas is one of the fuels which can be a transition to-
wards renewables like wind and solar and ocean cur-
rent and the whole array of different renewable tech-
nologies which are available. So that’s something the
Chamber is working very actively on.”
Some people see the power companies, who are de-
pendent upon fossil fuels for their revenue, as the
‘enemy;’ that they are, in fact, retarding the prog-
ress that needs to be made because it’s normal for
any industry to try and stay alive as long as possible.
How does the Chamber respond to that kind of think-
ing?
“I think it’s a tremendous mistake to see the oil and
gas companies as the enemy. I think we’d be the com-
panies that have the potential to deliver quite extraor-
