Business View Caribbean - January 2015 73
DRIVER:
The National Gas Company is a strong com-
pany. They are minority investors in some of the up-
stream production, they own and manage the pipeline
network in the country, they own some of the gas pro-
cessing facilities and they are the only gas marketing
company selling to domestic consumers, especially
the petrochemical facilities. They have an extremely
healthy balance sheet and are very profitable. They’re
the second biggest taxpayer in the country after BP.
Petrotrin, the state oil company has had a few more
problems. It is the country’s major oil producer, but
remember we are very much a gas based economy
and on an energy equivalent basis, we produce nine
times more gas than we do oil. In addition to being the
major oil producer it also owns and operates the only
oil refinery and it is a major employer. The company
has been having some challenges in the current en-
vironment. The low oil prices and low refining margins
are effecting them badly and they have an old infra-
structure to manage and a trade union who resists any
attempts to restructure.
BUSINESS VIEW: Five years from now, what do you
expect the climate to look like?
DRIVER: I think there’s a very positive future for the
Trinidad & Tobago energy sector. The big positive game
changers would be deep-water exploration, which is
underway at the moment. Getting positive results out
of that could be a major game changer for the country.
There’s some very big geological structures out there
that are being looked at. BHP will be drilling those over
the next few years. If they have a major oil find, that
could solidify some things. Depending upon what hap-
pens in Venezuela, there’s also the possibility of devel-
oping the fields that straddle the maritime boundary
between Trinidad and Venezuela, which could also be
a big changer to cause positive things.
Other than that, I think we’re more now in a situation
where the gas industry is trying to maintain a plateau
of production and that’s hard work in the gas indus-
try, because you have to go on re-investing each and
every year just to maintain production. It’s a healthy
future, but there’s a lot of work we need to see happen
around being more efficient in how we’re using energy
in the country within our domestic market. There are
significant opportunities for us to export our energy
services to other countries, given out expertise and
strong local service companies. There are also some
opportunities for attracting other industries into the
country using our expertise in the oil and gas industry
and with engineering skills to be able to attract other
projects. For example, there’s a major project at the
moment looking to set up a solar panel manufacturing
integrated facility in the country. Those are some of
the things I think we can transition into, based on our
existing expertise.
GOVERNMENT & PUBLIC SECTORS
