On March 1, 2026, Anthony Paul - a former director in Trinidad and Tobago's Ministry of Energy - published an op-ed in Guyana's Kaieteur News. His message was addressed to Guyanese but aimed at Trinidad: "Every rising petroleum state believes it is different - until it begins to repeat the same institutional mistakes."
The piece was published in Guyana. It was not covered by any Trinidad and Tobago outlet.
The Numbers
Trinidad and Tobago's oil production has collapsed from approximately 278,000 barrels per day at its 1970s peak to under 54,000 bpd today. The country that once defined Caribbean petroleum wealth now produces less than a tenth of what it did at its height.
Guyana surges past 660,000 bpd and climbing. The Stabroek Block, operated by ExxonMobil, has transformed one of the hemisphere's poorest nations into one of its fastest-growing economies. GDP growth rates that the rest of the Caribbean can only dream of.
The superficial narrative is that Guyana is rising while Trinidad is declining. Paul's argument is more nuanced: Guyana is at the beginning of a curve that Trinidad has already completed. The institutional weaknesses that turned Trinidad and Tobago from petroleum superpower to production decline are not unique to Trinidad. They are features of the resource economy model itself.
The Institutional Decay
What happened to Trinidad and Tobago's energy sector was not a natural disaster. Production declined because of underinvestment in exploration, deteriorating relationships with international operators, an overreliance on a single revenue stream that discouraged economic diversification, and a political culture that treated energy revenue as a permanent entitlement rather than a depleting asset.
The Heritage and Stabilisation Fund - Trinidad and Tobago's sovereign wealth fund - exists but has never been allowed to grow to a level that could sustain the economy through a prolonged downturn. The fund's balance, while significant, represents a fraction of what it should be after decades of petroleum revenue.
The downstream industrial complex at Point Lisas - ammonia, methanol, urea - was built on cheap gas that is now scarce and expensive. The Nutrien shutdown is a direct consequence: when gas pricing no longer supports petrochemical production, the plants close.
The Guyana Opportunity
Vice President Jagdeo has discussed exporting Guyanese gas to Trinidad for processing - a potential lifeline for Trinidad and Tobago's underutilised LNG infrastructure. If the pipeline economics work, Trinidad and Tobago could pivot from producer to downstream processing hub, importing feedstock gas and adding value through existing industrial capacity.
This story exists only in Guyanese outlets. No Trinidad and Tobago journalist has explored the feasibility, the economics, or the policy implications of the country becoming a gas processor rather than a gas producer.
The pivot would require humility - an acknowledgement that the production era is ending and the service era must begin. Whether Trinidad and Tobago's political culture can make that adjustment is an open question. OilPrice.com posed it directly: "Can Trinidad and Tobago Escape the Oil Trap?"
The Lesson
Paul's op-ed was not an attack on Trinidad and Tobago. It was a warning to Guyana, grounded in lived experience. The institutions that manage resource wealth - the regulatory frameworks, the sovereign funds, the diversification policies, the fiscal discipline - matter more than the resource itself. Trinidad and Tobago had the resource and failed to build the institutions. Guyana has the resource and has not yet proven it can build them either.
The irony is that the warning was published in Guyana because a Guyanese audience needed to hear it. But the lessons are for Trinbagonians too - not about what went wrong in the past, but about what the country becomes now that the production peak is behind it and the question is no longer how to manage abundance but how to manage decline.
That question is not being asked in any sustained way by any major outlet in Trinidad and Tobago. A former Energy Ministry director had to go to Guyana to raise it.