Time to be responsible

NOW is a time for responsibility, urged the Prime Minister minutes after landing at Piarco Airport back from his trip to the UK and Ghana on Tuesday. By this he means, TT’s interest will best be secured in the areas of energy revenues, the global covid19 outbreak and relations with Jamaica and Guyana, Dr Rowley said.

He said, in London last week Tuesday, he had met the new leadership of BP, in a volatile world market of rival energy-exporters offering competition and discounts.

Rowley said TT’s largest gas producer was asked to get on board regarding TT’s manufacturers so the country could continue their production and exports.

Coming after the OWTU’s recent call, the PM said BP has agreed to discuss its pricing mechanism for selling gas to middleman NGC.

“BP has agreed to send its team to Trinidad. We expect significant progress. We have an agreement for some review of our marketing and pricing arrangements.”

While TT has had significant investment such as BP’s $5 billion, he said globally banks are under pressure not to invest in the hydrocarbon industry.

Rowley lamented that after his BP talks, last Monday had come carnage in the world’s stock market’s due to recession fears based on the covid19 epidemic. Losses were in the trillions, he said, with 20 per cent off BP’s stock price and oil firms down 18 per cent collectively. More woes had come from the Saudi Arabia/Russia oil-price war, with the former ramping up production and offering buyers a US$4 discount.

Without an OPEC intervention, the oil market is in turmoil, Rowley said. He said the TT budget was based on an oil-price of US$60 but on Tuesday it was US$31. Likewise, the natural gas price was set at US$3.25 per MMBTU but is now just US$1.60.

“We are in a very difficult situation with respect to the products we supply.

“We will get out of this not by shouting at each other but by how we behave as a responsible country.

“We have to be cognisant of what is happening in the market place. We have to be able to talk to the companies operating in TT, in the interest of the people of TT.” The delicate assignment to balance revenues/spending since 2014 has become more difficult, he said. Rowley hoped TT’s energy pacts would remain.

“These situations are usually oscillations. They go up and go down. Don’t let the situation get the better of us because there is a tomorrow.”

Rowley said uncertainty over covid19 has panicked the world marketplace with consequences. He said his Government has done all it can to be proactive to stop the virus entering TT and so far has no confirmed cases, although it is still “quite possible and very likely” TT will get some instances. While experts reckon the virus could peak in May, Cabinet has added Germany, France and Spain to TT’s watch-list of countries for covid19.

“We want to batten down the hatches, maintain surveillance and deal with it in a responsible way. Be responsible with our economy, revenues, expenditure and business in oil and gas, to continue to work to the benefits we want yet not pretend we (have) no concerns.”

He said his body temperature had just shown as normal, yet admitted how hard it was not to shake hands at events to avoid the virus.

Rowley viewed his Ghana trip as re-starting the late Patrick Manning’s Africa Energy Initiative of 2007, which he hinted the former PP government had not continued. He said from now until July 1, all will be done to get TT involved in Ghana’s gas business, namely its gas expansion, gas processing and gas pipeline businesses. Documents will be drafted by month-end, with contracts to be signed by July, to get the NGC and/or Phoenix Park Gas Processors to Ghana.

The PM said his agricultural adviser Dr John Alleyne is trying to get planting materials from Ghana for TT farmers, even as the two nations signed an MOU on air links. Ghana’s 30 million population are eager to do business with TT, he said. Rowley hit Kamla Persad-Bissessar for her speech on Monday at a UNC rally telling “all kind of nancy stories on a Jamaican bank in TT.”

He lamented that as an NCB employee is brother of National Security Minister Stuart Young and the bank had arranged government loans, the Opposition had falsely alleged corruption.

“I want to tell the Leader of the Opposition that if you don’t wish TT well, it is quite okay to disappear and stay home and enjoy what she enjoys.”

Rowley accused her of disturbing the equilibrium between TT and Jamaica. He said Persad-Bissessar was irresponsible. Saying he once had to personally visit Jamaica to avert a boycott of TT goods allegedly due to Persad-Bissessar’s remarks, Rowley said she was rekindling that old hurt.

Hailing Caricom head Mia Mottley for working hard on the Caribbean Single Market and Economy he said that treaty is important to TT.

“It is quite surprising the Leader of the Opposition would make this irresponsible attack on a Jamaican bank.”

He said the only thing the Government was guilty of was borrowing money, even as Young had always recused himself in Cabinet on the NCB issue.

On the Guyana elections, he said TT’s position lies within Caricom’s stance as voiced by Mottley. He called for calm, preservation of law and order, and the electoral process being made to work, to give Guyanese “a result from a free and fair elections.”