A po­ten­tial bil­lion-dol­lar surge in en­er­gy rev­enue could be on the hori­zon for Trinidad and To­ba­go, dri­ven by es­ca­lat­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions and a re­struc­tured At­lantic LNG pric­ing for­mu­la, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has said.

Mooni­lal not­ed that the coun­try is unique­ly po­si­tioned to ben­e­fit from a spike in Asian LNG price mark­ers. How­ev­er, his op­ti­mistic fis­cal out­look was quick­ly chal­lenged by his pre­de­ces­sor, Stu­art Young, who ar­gued that no amount of glob­al price in­creas­es could off­set what he de­scribed as “de­struc­tive prac­tices” desta­bil­is­ing the lo­cal petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.

Speak­ing on the ef­fects of the shift­ing geopo­lit­i­cal land­scape in the Mid­dle East, Mooni­lal told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that es­ca­lat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al con­flicts could pro­vide an “un­in­tend­ed” wind­fall for T&T’s en­er­gy cof­fers.