Expect some rearranging of government priorities in the oil and gas sector, Energy Minister Nicole Olivierre said yesterday.
The minister, who spoke at the official launch of the Extractive Industries Transparency Institute’s (EITI) 2013 Report, said the tight timeframe between the September 7 general election and the presentation of the national budget meant there “wasn’t any room for us to make any significant changes to what is being proposed.”
However, she added: “Our priorities may be different from what the previous government would have had in place, so we will look to re-arrange the priorities into what has already been put into the budget documents, and we will be reviewing that in the last quarter of the year.”
Olivierre said Government would look at the Natural Gas Master plan and may consider making changes to it. The report, which costs US $1.4 million, was presented in early September to former Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine.
“There may be some changes to the Master Plan and once we complete that review, then we would be able to say what policy changes we will be making,” she said.
The minister said there would be public presentation on the resource to production ratio in the Ryder Scott Report once the budget presentation was completed. She said not many people understood what the ratio means.
“You have to understand what the resource to production ratio really means to a country. It’s really a management index to guide how well you are managing your rate of production,” she said.
According to the 2013 EITI Report, government received $21,186 billion in revenue from major oil and gas companies.
The biggest contributor to revenue was Petroleum Profit Tax of $7.19 billion which is leveled on both oil and gas production. Supplemental Petroleum Tax was the second highest at $3.3 billion.
In terms of individual tax paying companies, bpTT was the single largest contributor to Government revenue, with payments totaling more than $6.5 billion, followed by NGC Group which contributed revenues totaling more than $4.6 billion.
The energy sector’s share of GDP stood at 42.9 per cent, with energy employment as a percentage of total employment moving slightly higher to 3.4 per cent. The sector generated $26,521 million, which amounted to half of total Government revenue.
State-owned energy companies’ contributions to Government energy-based revenue are NGC 81 per cent, Petrotrin 18 per cent and NP one per cent.