The recent plummeting of this nation’s oil production to a 60 -year low is proof that all of this Government’s promises over that last nine years of “saving & stabilizing the energy sector” have been nothing but political deception and gaslighting from an administration that clearly has no merit, comprehension, or capability of managing our oil and gas resources for the national benefit.
It is totally misleading and disingenuous that this government spent the last few days trying to convince the population of the success of state oil company Heritage Ltd when the government’s own figures revealed that national oil production for the last reported period has fallen below 50,000 barrels per day for the first time since Trinidad and Tobago became an independent nation.
As a country we must ask, where is the recovery they promised since 2015? Why has gas production also collapsed to its lowest in over two decades? Why has there been a 50 percent collapse in employment in the energy sector since 2015? Why has there been an exodus of energy service companies?
This government’s persistent PR of pictures in energy boardrooms, foreign energy trips and boasts about meeting various energy officials have yielded zero benefits due to their failure to innovate, inspire and incentivise the oil and gas industry.
They boast about their energy negotiations, yet we have seen no material value in increased exploration. They boast about their restructuring of Petrotrin into Heritage, yet production has collapsed. They boast about basket pricing models for our oil and gas, yet we are losing out billions in revenue because we simply do not have the quantum to benefit from high global prices.
They have operated the energy sector from the rear-view mirror, hypocritically condemning the work of the PP government yet never surpassing any of the PP government’s energy metrics.
Despite the baseless platitudes consistently echoed by this government that “this government is securing the energy sector for the future for our children”, they have constantly ignored that the energy mix is changing and there is need for the Government to support the upstream sector with proper technology investment. Despite falling energy revenue, the Government has constantly disregarded the change in the global oil and gas industry and the critical need to support the energy companies with critical incentives along the energy value chain. The government has disregarded the upstreamers by admitting our fields are mature, yet never once improving the fiscal terms to improve production.
This is not the view of the Opposition, but the companies themselves as only last week the CEO of one of top energy companies, Woodside, was forced to use an international conference to lobby for better terms to increase production in our province.
The exploration and production failures of this government continue to jeopardize our economic well-being as despite being a mature province, the longer we leave oil and gas stranded, we deny future generations of much needed revenue as well as national stability.