The writing is on the wall for Trinidad oil

On the face of it, any rise in prices is a bad thing for the consumer, but the circumstances in this case are exceptional, as is the method of raising the price. It’s the old law of supply and demand in its peculiar 21st century guise – and it has implications for smaller producers.

While the aim of producers of any commodity, be it oil, motor cars or peanuts, is to come up with more of it at a lower production cost, the oil industry now has to stop congratulating itself and start behaving as if there wasn’t so much of it available after all.

That’s because too much availability brings the price down, which is good for the man in the street, but not for the oil companies themselves, whose enormous profits filter through to their country’s government .

Now the mighty companies that have mastered the art of sucking the black sludge from the bowels of the earth have had to put the brakes on and leave them on – for the time being, anyway.

And in doing this they are depriving themselves of money, which is a straightforward contravention of the laws of business.

Full marks, then, to Saudi Arabia and Russia for coming to an agreement that benefits the smaller oil-producing nations.

Not that the Saudis and the Russians are going to starve because of this. Those who have been making an obscenely good living out of petrochemicals will have their living downgraded to absurdly good, while the poor people who have never got much out of it anyway will continue to get nothing.

When I first visited Venezuela seven years ago, the country was relatively buoyant, floating on a tide of oil which brought a smile to the face of controversial president Hugo Chavez.

You wouldn’t have known there was all this oil money around, though, because all the common people saw of it was almost-free petrol.

At that time you could fill your tank for about one US dollar – but the roads were crumbling, the power was on and off and the country was already on the slide because Chavez had an agenda that didn’t include obvious measures like making the infrastructure work efficiently.

While Trinidad and Tobago has reaped the benefits of its oil industry, it has hardly mirrored the success of the Arab countries, where in some cases everything is tax-free because the government doesn’t need to screw money out of the people, which is what taxation amounts to.

TT has ambled along in a suitably Caribbean way. Meanwhile, across the water in Suriname, they’ve got what used to be considered an emerging oil industry but is beginning to look like a myth.

The Americans call this Goliath of international commerce Big Oil. It makes huge profits and doesn’t care what happens on the way. And yet here we have Big Oil coming to agreements among its biggest members to hold their horses for a while.

The concept of business having too much of a good thing has been seen before in more modest arenas, and if I may use an example from my own experience, it will be from the world of the dairy farmer.

The island of Guernsey used to be famous for its cows. It still is, to a certain extent, with dairy herds full of Guernsey genes put to good use all over the world because of their ability to produce large quantities of good-quality milk.

Back home, though, the dairy industry is a skeleton of the mighty beast it used to be.

TT producers of many foods and other products can identify with this situation: it is often cheaper to import the stuff than to produce it yourself.

The only reason the dairy industry in my little island still exists at all is that visitors expect to see cute brown and white cows in the fields, so the farmers are permitted – not asked or required, but permitted – to produce a certain amount of milk.

Guernsey doesn’t actually need it, and the wider world certainly doesn’t.

The industry itself is just symbolic and the island is hanging onto it, whereas TT ’s glorious fruit heritage doesn’t even get a mention in its Wikipedia entry.

The world does need oil, just as it needs milk and coconuts, but it doesn’t need the contribution of every country that has oil reserves.

So how long will it be before the big boys say, “Okay, Trinidad, you’ve had your fun.

Now get back to the tropical fruits and the beaches and the liming and leave this ugly petrochemical business to us. We’ll call you if we