Silence over petro boom

WE FIND it quite irritating that, with the price of oil topping a record high of US$49.40 a barrel, the Government does not see it fit to enlighten the country about the benefits of this significant increase in our country’s revenue. What can be the reason for its silence? Over several weeks, the price of oil has been steadily escalating as a result of a combination of factors, bringing the best possible news to the people of Trinidad and Tobago.

In the present atmosphere of doom and gloom generated by the rampant crime menace, it is, perhaps, the one great reason for us to be optimistic, for our society to feel that, with the judicious and sensible application of our mounting petroleum prosperity, things will eventually get better. This is the hopeful message we expect the Government to be anxious to convey, this is the kind of spirit-lifting confidence that we feel it should want to inspire in a society deeply troubled by the enigma of its relative wealth and its agony over the crisis of crime and violence.

But even if the Government is immune to such thoughts, it cannot be oblivious to its basic and inescapable responsibility to inform the citizenry about the impact of the present astronomical rise in oil prices on the country’s economic fortunes. It seems that we must make this point ad nauseam, that TT’s oil and gas resources are not the property of the Government; rather, the natural wealth that lies within our boundaries belongs to the people of our country who now deserve to know, in exact, open and transparent terms, the extent of our additional revenue and precisely what the Government proposes to do with this substantial windfall.

It is an aggravation for Mr Manning and his Government to be agitating the country over their 2020 vision for achieving developed nation status and not realise that their accountability to the people must set the standard for such an objective. This development can hardly be a one-sided affair. Trinidad and Tobago has been blessed with abundant natural resources, in oil and particularly in natural gas, and, based on this, the country now has what appears to be a booming energy sector. Yet this is an area of TT’s economy that remains largely a mystery because, for whatever reason, the Government has preferred to hold details of the development decisions it has taken close to its chest. The present situation with oil prices illustrates this.

Maybe we should now put it as bluntly and as brutally as we can: Precisely what is the Government doing with the people’s oil and gas resources; are these precious and wasting assets being given away to foreign interests or are we deriving what we should from them as proprietors? This has always been the subject of general speculation and concern, yet who really knows the truth about this situation except the Government which has been responsible for negotiating the arrangements, contracts and taxing regimes with multinationals engaged in development of the energy sector. The attitude of the Government to these matters has always been that it’s nobody else’s business, so much so that one prominent economist has accused the administration of operating an “economic dictatorship.”

This newspaper has been trying without success to obtain information about the current high oil prices and its effects on and implications for our economy, particularly in light of the coming Budget. As far as we are concerned, the Government’s continuing silence is not only contemptuous of the people of our oil producing country but it can only lead to all kinds of ill-informed speculation. It may well be that Mr Manning and his administration just does not care about this.