Minister of Energy and Energy Industries Dr. Roodal Moonilal has ordered a probe into a $7 billion “mistake” in calculating profit from a natural gas exploration deal that was approved by the former PNM administration.
At Thursday’s Post-Cabinet Media Briefing, he said Cabinet has given approval to amend a production-sharing contract for a deepwater block shared by Woodside Energy and bpTT.
According to Dr. Moonilal, the production-sharing contract was recommended by former Energy Minister Stuart Young and signed off by the previous government in January 2025. However, it was discovered in April 2025 that there was a detrimental matrix in the costing and the returns to the government and the people of Trinidad and Tobago.
“That Cabinet approved and confirmed a Note that reduced the government share of the profits of this particular profit-sharing contract by between 20 to 30%. What it meant is that this country stood to lose, if we did not act today, the country stood to lose, in terms of revenue, 6.7 billion Trinidad and Tobago dollars.”
The Energy Minister said he was amazed that the mistake was actually picked up by the contractor, Woodside Energy.
He said the government has now approved a new natural gas price structure that will give the government an increase in revenue of between 10% and 20%.
“I have asked, incidentally, for a complete investigation by the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries as to how an error, a mistake, a miscalculation, could take place with a pricing matrix that allows a government to lose a billion United States dollars, almost 7 billion Trinidad and Tobago dollars, in the life of a project. How can a mistake like that take place?”