Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has said the gov­ern­ment will ne­go­ti­ate the terms of the cross-bor­der nat­ur­al gas deals in the best in­ter­ests of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This was in re­sponse to ques­tions posed to him by Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young con­cern­ing the gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal pol­i­cy on nat­ur­al gas from near-bor­der and cross-bor­der fields, such as the Drag­on Gas field and the Man­akin-Cocuina field.

“We are es­tab­lish­ing a fis­cal frame­work that will en­sure Trinidad and To­ba­go cap­tures val­ue from ex­ter­nal hy­dro­car­bons en­ter­ing this coun­try. Pos­si­ble rev­enue arrange­ments may in­clude fixed fees for the im­por­ta­tion of hy­dro­car­bons, com­mod­i­ty charges based on the vol­ume of gas con­sumed, unit tran­sit fees based on dis­tance, re­served vol­ume or con­sumed vol­ume, and any oth­er mech­a­nism re­quired to pro­tect the na­tion­al in­ter­est while pre­serv­ing project vi­a­bil­i­ty,” said Tan­coo, who al­so stat­ed the ex­ist­ing gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments with neigh­bour­ing ju­ris­dic­tions did not es­tab­lish spe­cif­ic fis­cal terms for the im­por­ta­tion of hy­dro­car­bons in­to T&T.