Former Trinidad and Tobago Minister of Energy Kevin Ramnarine says that his country must position itself to be the logistics hub for Guyana’s booming oil sector and Private Sector Commission (PSC) head Gerry Gouveia says that politicians here have to unite to give Guyanese the tools to provide diverse services or watch the opportunities snatched by other countries.
“We have enough brainpower between our political stakeholders…but if they continue to fight and believe it is only one party that is endowed with the knowledge to help, they will hurt the people,” Gouveia told Stabroek News yesterday.
“The quicker they stop fighting, the better for all of us as a nation….political stakeholders have to stop fighting each other, because when they are fighting, [other] people will take over,” he added.
According to Trinidad’s Loop News, Ramnarine told a forum that the future of Trinidad and Tobago’s economy depends on its ability to provide port and logistics services for Guyana’s booming oil industry. Ramnarine, according to the report, was speaking at a post-budget session at the University of the West Indies, hosted by the Greater Tunapuna Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the San Juan Business Chamber, and Arima Business Chamber to discuss measures proposed by Trinidad’s Finance Minister Colm Imbert in his recent national budget presentation.
“What I didn’t see mentioned in this budget was, how we are going to strategically position our country to play a role in Guyana?” the Loop quoted Ramnarine as saying.
“All of a sudden you have a country which is poised to become the ‘Abu Dhabi of the Caribbean’. Located a day-and-a-half’s sailing from Guyana is Trinidad and Tobago, where we have natural deep-water harbours, port infrastructure and so on. Of course, they don’t have that because they have a problem with siltation because of their river systems etc, so we should be positioning this economy to be a port and logistics supply base for Guyana,” he said.
“We were supposed to have a second phase of the Galeota Port…we need to expand the Galeota Port if we are to service Guyana. I think strategically positioning this country to service Guyana and Suriname is critical for diversification,” he said.
Last month, oil major ExxonMobil announced its 14th major oil discovery here and is on track to begin production next year. The UK-headquartered Tullow Oil has also made two discoveries.
The distance from ExxonMobil’s offshore operations in the Stabroek Block to Trinidad and Tobago works out to about four times the sailing distance when compared to Georgetown. However, as more companies begin operations and with limited shore base operators to provide necessary services, they will have no choice but to look externally.
Already, a number of companies from Trinidad and Tobago have established businesses here.
Tullow has said that it will shift operations from its Trinidad base to local shores and plans for its first shore base here by next year are in the pipeline.
Gouveia said Ramnarine is wrong that Guyana could not get a deep-water harbour, or meet the demands for port and logistics services. However, he said that this country could see itself in a place of reliance on other nations to provide the services because of the lack of preparedness to meet the skills set and infrastructure required.