Energy minister on CNN: Hey! Trinidad and Tobago has gas

Responding to questions in a six-minute interview on CNN’s Quest Means Business news programme on Tuesday, Minister of Energy Stuart Young said Trinidad and Tobago is ready and willing to help the world wean itself off Russian oil and gas amid the Ukrainian invasion.

“What you have to look at is what other countries can do to help contribute by ramping up production,” he said.

“So how does the rest of the world and in particular Europe deal with its current energy crisis? They have to look at where there is an alternative supply, and hey! TT is one of those places.”

Plugging TT as a significant gas producer for the past few decades, Young said TT produced about 770 million mmbtu of LNG a year at its peak. He added that it was also a supplier of petrochemicals, producing tonnes of ammonia and other petrochemicals on a yearly basis.

He added TT is doing better coming out of the pandemic, seeing increases in revenue from LNG and ammonia. He said the increased revenue will be used to pay bills.

“As a government we are really making revenue increases off of taxation, but coming out of the pandemic we have bills. So we will be paying our bills. The government revenue is used to look after about 1.4 million people here in TT. We will be spending it on our education and other things that are necessary for the people.”

According to a BBC report, Russia accounted for 41 per cent of the natural gas imports to Europe. Germany was the largest importer taking in about 42.6 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Russia. Japan, which took the least, still imported 8.8 billion cubic metres.

Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, the EU announced a ban on buying Russian oil after the end of 2022, but there still has been no consensus on stopping imports of gas.

Germany, in February, halted its Nord Stream 2 project, which was a €10 billion pipeline for natural gas straight from Russia to Germany. The project would have supplied heat to about 26 million German homes.