Doers…versus talkers

Whenever we have these international conferences – such as the just concluded Energy Conference – we gotta look out for the hustlers, carpetbaggers, and grifters who’re looking to parlay some angle for a (quick) buck. Now these hustlers ain’t just private con artists – but also from Governments!! The trick to unmasking them is to dissect their spiels. Sadly, your Eyewitness couldn’t attend in person – his religious obligations conflicted in this period of Lent, Shivratri and Ramadan!! So he gotta go on what was covered in the media – even the about-to-be-shuttered Stabber!!
One operator was T&T’s Energy Minister Roodal Moonilal, who was sent with a “team” by the energetic PM Kamla Bissessar, who’d vociferously supported President Trump in his Venezuelan adventures – to the chagrin of some of her fellow Caricom heads!! She was rewarded with the reactivation of the contract to exploit Venezuela’s multi-trillion Dragon Gas Field!! Your Eyewitness figured that exploitation – where BP would be the operator – would occupy their attention as they try to dig themselves out of the hole after their oil runs out!! Their PM Eric Williams had boasted, “oil doan spoil” – but they discovered that “oil does done”!! It’s a lesson our leaders shouldn’t forget!!
Anyhow, back to Moonilall at the energy conference! He allowed that President Ali introduced him to some Saudis in attendance, and they’d discussed possible financing to get their Petrotrin Refinery – shuttered in 2018 by the PNM – going again!! Now if you know anything about Trinidad, that’s like the PPP shutting down Guysuco!! Things had to have been waaaay past the point of no return for them to concede that even the oil workers – who’d taken over the operations – were piling up debt every day the facility was run!! Petrotrin has a combined debt of US$2 BILLION that gotta be paid sooner rather than later!!
Moonilall exposed the hustler mentality when he suggested that a revived Petrotrin could possibly refine some of our oil – to deal with their major challenge: sourcing crude!! But the elephant in the room is that Petrotrin was built to process very heavy and sour (lotsa sulphur) crude, and our oil is very, very light and SWEET!! The hustle was explicit when Moonilall addressed this (fatal) objection by saying glibly: “That distinction with heavy and light crude is becoming less and less significant because now they have the technologies and the chemistry and so on to convert one to the other, so it’s really an issue of the 80s, 90s and so on to talk heavy, light crude. The technology is there now to convert and use into the refineries,” he said.
Really?? Anything can be done technologically, but the question is whether it’s commercially feasible!! And it ain’t!! Hustler!!

…in the Courts
In a decision that’s gonna test the separation of powers doctrine that’s fundamental to the rule of law in democratic governance, the US Supreme Court just struck down President Trump’s unilateral imposition of tariffs across the globe on friends and foes alike!! Now, this is both substantively and procedurally revolutionary!! For the latter, these Supremes are supposed to have a conservative majority – he even appointed three of them!! – and are expected to support Trump’s ideological bent!! Evidently, Trump’s been using a law from the seventies that was supposed to be used in emergencies – and not as a foreign policy strategy!!
Trump, of course, is livid – since this decision has removed his biggest weapon to create a new MAGA world order – and he hit back by immediately imposing an across-the-board 10% tariff that’s within his remit!! But his words show he ain’t taking the rebuff sitting down!!
He called the justices – especially the ones he appointed – a “disgrace to our nation” of whom he was “ashamed”!!

…and no provocations
While our policy is “Drill, baby, drill!!”, the Government just turned down Exxon’s request to drill closer to Venezuelan waters. Unlike Venezuela under Mad Maduro, we don’t want to seem provocative to the ICJ’s coming judgement!!