Cabinet must act now to take control of gas allocation before short term commercial logic locks Trinidad and Tobago into long term economic decline: while the position of the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago to channel scarce gas to the highest immediate return, often via Atlantic LNG is financially rational, it is not a national development strategy, and if left unchecked will steadily starve the Point Lisas Industrial Estate of supply, eroding jobs, downstream industries, and decades of value added export capacity; this is not a technical allocation issue but a defining policy choice about whether the country remains an integrated industrial economy or retreats to a raw gas exporter, and therefore Government must immediately establish and publish a transparent, rules based national gas allocation framework that balances revenue, employment, and strategic industrial resilience, because allowing ad hoc, price driven decisions to prevail is not management, it is abdication of responsibility with irreversible consequences.
Gordon Laughlin
Westmoorings
