0
items
US$0
Keynote address by Dr. Dax Driver, President and CEO, Energy Chamber of T&T
4th Annual Southern Africa Oil & Gas Conference
Century City Conference Centre, Cape Town, South Africa
19 & 20 March 2025
Viewing entries by
Dr. Thackwray 'Dax' Driver
“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”
This quote from Mark Twain was used by one Energy Chamber member, Colm de Freitas, CEO of engineering firm D2F Technical Ltd., to sum up his feelings after the first day of the Trinidad & Tobago Energy Conference 2025.
One of the things that I notice at some conferences I attend is a group of four or five people from one company who turn up at the conference together, sit together in the conference hall, stand around together in the coffee break, sit together at lunch and then huddle together at the networking cocktail sessions. You do not see company leaders doing this. They will move around talking to as many people as possible.
My first full week back at work after the Christmas break is always an exhilarating one, because it is always just a few weeks ahead of our biggest and more important event for the year, the annual Trinidad & Tobago Energy Conference. We always plan our conference for the beginning of the year, close but not too close to Carnival. This year we have a little more breathing room than usual because Carnival is late, so our 2025 dates are the 10-12th February 2025, rather than the usual final week of January. But the week has still been intense.
“Collaboration” was a word that kept popping up at the Guyana Energy Conference this week, just as it did at the T&T Energy Conference a few weeks ago. In Georgetown this week there was a strong feeling of collaboration and cooperation between Guyana, the new oil giant and the worlds fastest growing economy, and Trinidad & Tobago, one of the worlds oldest oil producers and an important player in natural gas and petrochemicals. This was surely helped by the presence of the Trinidad & Tobago Prime Minster, Dr Keith Rowley, and the Minister of Energy, Stuart Young, and strong statements about regional integration from President of Guyana, Irfan Ali and other leaders from Guyana.
I have never been someone afraid of speaking in public, but I must admit that I was nervous about conducting a one-to-one interview with the Honourable Dr Keith Rowley, the Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago, in front of more than seven hundred delegates and the entire nation via TV and the wide world via the livestream.
One of the topics discussed at the Local Content Forum this week was creating a uniform pre-qualification system across the energy sector. This idea got resounding support from the members who attended the Forum from across the supply chain. The discussion at the Forum concentrated on how this could best be achieved and the issues that will need to be overcome.
The last few days have seen a flurry of positive developments in the Trinidad & Tobago energy sector: the Trinidad & Tobago and Venezuelan government agreement on the development of the Dragon gas field, the agreement of production sharing contracts for a Shell/bp consortium to explore three deepwater blocks, the NGC – Shell Manatee field offtake contract for domestic gas, the visit from Marubeni and discussions with the Minister of Energy on power, hydrogen and wind, and the recommitment of Hydrogen de France to invest in hydrogen production in Trinidad and the upcoming visit of senior executives from the company. There was also news that bpTT and Shell executives had special meetings with the Board of Directors of NGC, their discussions centered around long-term gas supply, strategies for decarbonisation of the energy and industrial sectors, and mechanisms to help transition the energy value chain to a low-carbon future. All of this is positive news for the future of the Trinidad & Tobago energy sector and they all relate to elements of the Energy Chamber’s six-point plan to secure the future of our gas industry and future exports of gas and petrochemicals.
At the T&T Energy Conference in January 2023, one of the key sentiments coming out of all the discussions was that while we were on the right pathways to secure the future of the sector, we simply needed to be moving faster. This was a sentiment we heard not just from industry leaders but also from senior government leaders, especially the Minister of Energy and Energy Industries, Stuart Young.
At the T&T Energy Conference in January 2023 one of the key sentiments coming out of all of the discussions was that while we were on the right pathways to secure the future of the sector we simply needed to be moving faster. This was a sentiment we heard not just from industry leaders but also from senior government leaders, especially the Minister of Energy, Stuart Young.
The global pandemic had a profound impact on expectations about where people work. With lockdowns, companies were forced overnight to implement the remote work practices that had often been discussed in the past but rarely executed. For many employees this was a positive experience and lots of people have been keen to maintain remote working practices even as the pandemic has retreated.
I really enjoyed my visit to Guyana this week to attend the Guyana Basin Summit. It was great to catch-up with old friends and colleagues and to make many new contacts as well. This was my first visit since the pandemic and it’s really encouraging to see the progress that has been made in the past few years, with lots of stories of productive new business relationships between Trinidadian and Guyanese companies, and with many Surinamese and Jamaican businesses also in the mix.
Local content is often an emotive issue. It can often get caught-up with ideas about identity and complicated by political positioning. The noise around local content can drown out any proper policy analysis.
The strategy of using a household’s T&TEC electricity bill as a way of targeting support to the neediest households, is an interesting and innovative policy development. This is something that the Energy Chamber recommended to the Roadmap to Recovery policy development process in 2020, in the midst of the first wave of the COVID pandemic. There is a strong correlation between household income and electricity use. This means that it makes good sense to use electricity bills as a method to overcome the vexing issue of means testing and to avoid the moral hazard often associated with cash transfer or food card programmes, where better off households with the right political or social contacts access the support, rather than the households most in need.
I was delighted to see the Minister of Finance remove all import duties and other taxes on electric vehicles (EVs). Coming on top of the recent launch of the first solar-powered fast-charging station, the new NP service station in Preysal, this has given a big boost to the profile and possibilities of EVs in Trinidad & Tobago.
At most major Energy Chamber conferences, I find that there is one simple phrase that really sticks with me and I end up thinking about a lot in the days and weeks after the event. At the 2021 Energy Efficiency and Renewables Conference it was a simple statement from Prof. Avinash Persaud, advisor to the Prime Minister of Barbados, who reminded us all that “just because something is obvious, does not mean it will happen”.
The Energy Chamber conducted a survey among signatories to understand their actions and steps taken toward becoming more energy efficient.
According to those surveyed, 95% of the companies indicated that they have attempted to reduce the use of natural resources and electricity in their operations and over 70% of respondents report that they have examined the possibility of including renewable energy sources in their operations.
When I discuss diversification with many people in Trinidad, “cheap natural gas” is often mentioned as a key strength that we should leverage to attract new export-oriented industries. The Trinidad and Tobago investment promotion agency, InvesTT, lists the very low cost of electricity as one of the central reasons why international investors should consider Trinidad and Tobago as an investment destination.
I was very pleased and a bit surprised to hear about the “light bulb swap” project announced in the Minister of Finance’s national budget speech. The reason I was surprised was that Minister Imbert had seemed rather sceptical about the idea when I presented it to him, and other members of the National Tripartite Advisory Council, in a pre-budget consultation session. I guess his opinion might have been swayed when the economic data supporting the idea was presented as part of the National Energy Efficiency Committee’s report submitted to the Minister of Public Utilities.
One of the things that upsets me the most is hearing of cases where small contractors have been ripped off by unscrupulous “consultants” selling them the promise that they will be STOW certified if they just pay the consultant some exorbitant fee. It really makes me see red.