It is my pleasure to deliver the feature address this morning at the 7th Geological
Conference of the Geological Society of Trinidad and Tobago (GSTT).
Prior to the advent of local ownership in the oil and gas industry the majority of the
industry’s technical support were expatriate. In 1974 when Government acquired the
interests of Shell Trinidad and formed Trintoc, it became apparent that Trintoc could
not depend on accessing resources from the foreign companies but would have to
develop its own inhouse capability. The major human resource deficiency was in
geology. The company had petroleum engineers, drillers and the like but no
geologists. This led to the active recruiting abroad of geologists with linkages to
Trinidad and Tobago