Politics and energy in post-election Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname and Guyana

Shortly before Suriname went to the polls this past May, Risk Advisory and the Caribbean Policy Consortium brought together a group of experts to discuss the merits and barriers to integrating the energy sectors of Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad & Tobago. The main takeaway from that discussion was that there is great potential for integration, spanning infrastructure, electricity generation, gas liquefaction, and energy services. What the region needed was a collaborative vision on a grand scale to build politically and commercially attractive opportunities. It remains to be seen if that vision comes together, or is even seen as desirable by newly formed administrations in all three countries. But barring any unexpected collapse in government, the political actors responsible for stewarding their country’s energy policy for the next five years have been set.

Governments across all three parts of the Southern Caribbean Energy Matrix appear to be committed to hydrocarbon development. T&T has been an energy player for over a century, Guyana is soon to become the world’s largest petroleum producer per capita, and Suriname hopes to follow shortly behind. All three countries should be dynamic and rising jurisdictions in the global energy system, a trend that could be considerably enhanced by improved regional cooperation and the development of mutually beneficial shared infrastructure.

Election outcomes

In Trinidad & Tobago, voters rejected the outgoing People’s National Movement (PNM) in favor of the United National Congress (UNC). The PNM and the UNC are the largest political parties in T&T and have traded offices since the early 1990s. Indeed, newly incoming Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar previously held the role of Prime Minister from 2010 to 2015.

T&T’s 2025 election came at a challenging time for the country. Homicide and violent crime has exploded due to the increasing influence of organized criminal groups. In July 2025, the previous declared a state or emergency in an effort to reduce violent crime. The incumbent PNM government was also battling several corruption scandals, and economic stagnation, mixed with the surge in violent crime, led to voter fatigue after 10 years in office. Given the importance of hydrocarbons to T&T’s economy, concern about economic stagnation directly links to decreasing oil and gas output. Reversing or navigating the country’s long-term production decline will be a paramount priority for the new UNC government.

Suriname’s election was one of many firsts. It was the first election following Total’s decision to proceed with offshore Block 58 - a crucially important step in Suriname’s ambitions to follow in Guyana’s footsteps as a major offshore petro-state. It was also the first election held under Suriname’s newly-implemented proportional representation electoral system, a critical shake-up made necessary when the Supreme Court ruled the country’s previous district-based system unconstitutional in 2022. Election 2025 was also the country’s first in the post-Dési Bouterse era, with the former dictator-turned-elected-president passing away in December while in hiding from a recently upheld prison sentence for the murder of 15 political opponents in 1982. And lastly, Suriname elected its first ever female head of state. Jennifer Geerlings-Simons was inaugurated President on July 16, and hails from the National Democratic Party (NDP) - the same party Dési Bouterse founded in 1987 and functionally led until his death.

Geerlings-Simons’ victory was not assured, nor is it necessarily reflective of a sweeping popular mandate. Like the previous government, led by the Progressive Reform Party’s (VHP) Chan Santokhi, hers is a coalition. Suriname’s change in government reflects coalition politics more than fundamental shifts in popular support. The NDP now has 18 seats in parliament to the VHP’s 17, respectively, just a two and three seat gain and loss from 2020. The durability of the NDP’s coalition government constitutes one of the biggest risks for foreign companies doing business in Suriname, with changes to the composition of the country’s governing coalition possibly heralding significant policy changes, particularly surrounding fiscal policy.

The People’s Progressive Party/Civil (PPP) of Guyana bucked the region’s 2025 anti-incumbency trend. This election was fought primarily on competing visions for the country’s newfound oil wealth. Guyana reached first oil in December 2019, just before the PPP won Guyana’s general election in 2020. The ExxonMobil Guyana-led consortium is currently producing approximately 650,000 barrels per day, and production is expected to further increase later this year when the Yellowtail project starts production. The PPP's return to government in 2025 wasn’t a surprise. President Irfaan Ali’s government used its incumbency advantage to deliver considerable pre-election spending programs, and was long considered to be the field’s front-runner. 

The bigger surprise was the outcome of Guyana’s battle for second place. Since Guyana’s return to full democracy in 1992, the country has been mostly dominated by the PPP, with the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC, otherwise referred to as A Partnership for National Unity, or APNU, when working in an electoral coalition with several smaller parties) usually serving as the main opposition. No longer. Just three months before the September election, Azruddin Mohamed, the son of Guyanese businessman and longtime PPP supporter Nazar Mohamed, founded the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party, which stormed to a second-place finish and has become Guyana’s new official opposition with 16 of the 65 seats in Guyana’s National Assembly to APNU’s 12. Notwithstanding the Mohamed family’s billionaire status, Azruddin ably channeled discontent among younger voters and those frustrated by the distribution of Guyana’s oil wealth. Making things more complicated, both Azruddin and Nazar were sanctioned by the United States for corruption and illegal gold smuggling in June 2024. The US, not to mention Western oil and gas companies, will breathe a sigh of relief that the PPP was able to win a parliamentary majority and avoided having a US-sanctioned politician acting as coalition king-maker.

Energy implications in the Southern Caribbean Energy Matrix

Trinidad & Tobago
Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname, and Guyana’s 2025 elections all came at a sensitive moment for their respective energy security and oil and gas policy. But T&T, a legacy producer with over 100 years of experience in oil and gas, is in perhaps the most precarious financial position of the three. Oil output has been on a steady decline since its peak in the 1970s, and the country’s existing mature fields cannot be relied on to significantly boost production. That said, gas has always been the main driver of T&T’s hydrocarbon economy. A downturn in oil wouldn’t be as concerning for the country’s economy if gas output remained high. However, it too has slipped from lofty highs in the early 2000s, to the point where T&T’s downstream industry - petrochemicals, LNG, and domestic energy production - are increasingly having to compete with each other for molecules. 

Oil and gas accounts for about 40 percent of Trinidad & Tobago’s GDP and 80 percent of exports, so without considerable economic diversification and a reorientation of the country’s power generation infrastructure, structural decline in the country’s oil and gas sector will remain a serious concern for policymakers. Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar’s government has signaled some notable shifts from her PNM forerunner. Domestically, she has pledged to restructure and reconstitute Petrotrin, the former state oil company shuttered in 2018, and reopen the country’s Pointe-à-Pierrere petroleum refinery. However, there were market-based forces that contributed to their respective shuttering. Getting both back off the ground will require sound management and likely an increase in liquid petroleum production.

So far, the UNC government’s foreign policy has been in closer alignment with US interests, including recent announcements that Trinidad & Tobago would be open to cooperating with the US military against Venezuelan aggression in Guyana. More on that below, but adopting a military posture against Venezuela is a significant step for a country just seven miles off Venezuela’s coast, particularly given the two countries had until recently tried to jointly develop the Dragon Field, a large offshore gas deposit straddling the two countries’ maritime boundary. It is possible that T&T’s updated stance is motivated by a desire to develop its side of the Dragon Field without Venezuela, or convince the Trump administration to withdraw sanctions blocking international oil companies from working on the project. This goal was bolstered on September 30, when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated potential support for the Dragon Field’s development.

For those championing Trinidad & Tobago’s oil and gas sector, that and other recent developments are cause for optimism. September 17 was the submission deadline for private exploration and development companies to place bids on exploration licenses in 26 offshore blocks to the country’s northeast. While many of these blocks have had exploration activity in the past, it’s worth remembering that exploratory wells had been drilled in Guyana’s Stabroek block for decades prior to ExxonMobil’s massive commercial-grade discovery in 2015. While a Guyana-level find is extremely optimistic, T&T is no doubt hoping its slice of the Guyana-Suriname basin can bring the country back into the oil production big-leagues.  

On the topic of ExxonMobil, it recently signed a Production Sharing Contract with T&T’s new government for seven offshore blocks immediately to the east of those currently up for auction. In other words, ExxonMobil is making a bet that the acreage closest to its prolific FPSOs in Guyana may yield another significant discovery. Like all prospecting, the outcome of this and other offshore exploration is uncertain. But the PSC and other potential offshore exploration activity have created a sense of optimism that has been long-absent in Trinidad & Tobago’s oil and gas sector.

Suriname
For a country only a year out from FID on its first offshore development project, Suriname’s election was surprisingly light on specifics when it came to energy policy and a plan to steward the country’s incoming oil wealth. While management of the country’s burgeoning offshore industry, and what type of local content requirements will be adopted in particular, were election issues, they featured considerably behind governance and fiscal policy. There, voters punished the incumbent VHP for strict austerity measures and long-running allegations of corruption and cronyism. 

Those austerity measures were the result of a decade of financial mismanagement by the Bouterse-led NDP. With the party now returned to office, all eyes will be on their handling of the public purse. While Suriname’s macroeconomic picture improved significantly during the VHP’s government, that was little comfort to voters hit hard by the elimination of energy and other subsidies. In the face of voters’ fatigue with the VHP’s emphasis on fiscal discipline, there is concern in the bond market that the new government will eschew sound financial management in favor of politically popular spending. The IMF will look on nervously, having released the final round of USD 570 million in loans to Suriname this past March, funds that at some point will have to be repaid. 

One of Suriname’s IMF conditions was to restructure its existing sovereign and commercial debt. Suriname largely completed that process in December 2023, with most bondholders agreeing to a considerable reduction in returns, with new 10-year instruments backed by future oil revenues. Each of Suriname’s financial stakeholders now has a significant interest in Total and APA reaching first oil, and reaching it quickly. Despite Suriname’s public finances being in much better shape now than five years ago, satisfying its debt obligations will hinge on substantial and steady oil revenues coming well before 2030.

For now, the picture in Suriname is positive. First oil is projected in 2028, and hydrocarbon development enjoys consensus political support. On the political front, companies doing business in Suriname have what should be a stable set of interlocutors for the time being, though coalition changes are a considerable risk. Furthermore, Dési Bouterse’s death removes him as a concern for private companies. For years, international operators struggled to navigate engagement with the international pariah, who had not only been convicted for murder in his own country, but was also convicted in absentia of drug smuggling in the Netherlands, Suriname’s former colonizer and intermittent financial patron. 

Suriname is still internally defining its role as an emerging petro-state. It is the world’s most heavily forested country and a net carbon sink that has for years positioned itself at the forefront of climate action and calls for developed countries to help ease the financial burdens of climate change on developing states. Despite moving enthusiastically ahead with offshore petroleum development, the country has not sought to abandon its green credentials. Rather, it is seeking to use oil wealth to mitigate climate risks and diversify its economy. Suriname has considerable technical labor shortages, and investments in health and education will be crucial to both hosting an expanding offshore industry and creating a platform to diversify into other sectors.

Guyana
Unlike neighboring Suriname, oil development was a significant ballot question in Guyana. Since reaching first oil in December 2019, Guyana has enjoyed dizzying economic growth. However, that growth has not been diffused evenly throughout the country, and a considerable constituency of voters expressed their discontent with the nature and pace of societal uplift. 

This dissatisfaction was leveraged by both opposition parties (APNU and WIN), who both pledged to renegotiate the 2016 production sharing agreement between the Government of Guyana and the ExxonMobil-led consortium. ExxonMobil, however, has expressed no willingness to renegotiate terms, arguing its efforts in the Stabroek block have de-risked Guyana’s entire offshore industry. Given that, how an incoming government would have forced ExxonMobil to the bargaining table is unclear. In any case, the victory of the PPP likely forestalls any attempt to change contract terms. During the election, the PPP had warned that forced renegotiation of the government’s agreement would undermine investor confidence at a time when Guyana was seeing record levels of financial inflows and still seeking to develop additional offshore deposits.

While the much-discussed push for renegotiation will likely go nowhere in the near to medium term, Guyana-watchers should still expect to hear about PSAs over the coming year. In 2026, ExxonMobil’s PSA will expire for the undeveloped parts of Stabroek, enabling the Guyanese government to renegotiate terms, or potentially go to a new leaseholder. The government has already published draft updated PSAs, to which ExxonMobil has expressed provisional agreement. As a result, while the terms of the existing Stabroek development should prove durable, at least for now, the fiscal landscape for new exploration and development projects post-2026 will be markedly different.

Guyana has enjoyed almost six years of oil revenues, and similar to what is envisioned in Suriname, the PPP government has sought to use hydrocarbon income to diversify its economy. Georgetown is booming, and large-scale infrastructure projects such as roadways, hospitals, and housing are well underway. The country has also used oil revenues to bolster its agricultural sector in an effort to be the “breadbasket of the Caribbean.” Perhaps most ambitiously, the PPP has pursued opportunities to leverage offshore gas reserves to reshape Guyana’s heavy industrial output. President Ali and Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, who leads the country’s oil and gas file, have touted using piped natural gas from offshore blocks to provide cheap energy for manufacturing and data center operations. Part of this vision is already unfolding with the Wales gas-to-energy project, a gas-fired power generation plant relying on gas from the Liza FPSO. Notwithstanding an ongoing dispute with the plant’s developers, the government hopes this initiative will significantly lower Guyana’s expensive consumer energy prices.

Lastly, we cannot ignore Venezuela when examining Guyana’s post-election energy landscape. Unsurprisingly, rejecting Venezuela’s ambition to control over two-thirds of Guyana’s landmass and the majority of its territorial waters was not a divisive electoral issue. So far, Venezuela’s Maduro government has been content to let the issue simmer, seemingly in an effort to distract his domestic audience from the blatantly fraudulent July 2024 election in which Maduro claimed victory despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. With that dynamic in mind, how and when Maduro will inflame tensions along the Venezuela-Guyana border is largely out of Guyana’s hands. 

The PPP government has, however, taken steps to shift the balance of power. Prior to September’s election, President Irfaan Ali had taken steps to publicly align with US interests, which increased following the inauguration of the second Trump administration. While on an official visit to Guyana in March, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hinted to a Guyanese audience that the US would provide some form of military backing to Guyana should Venezuela attack the country or ExxonMobil’s assets. More recently, Guyana was one of only a few CARICOM members to publicly back the Trump administration ordering a naval flotilla into the south Caribbean, a not-so-subtle threat directed at Venezuela.

Words matter, but actions matter more. The US administration will be keeping an eye on Chinese investment in Guyana. Chinese companies are already significant backers of large-scale Guyanese infrastructure projects, including the marquee Demerara Harbour bridge replacement. Expect to see the US, implicitly or as is more frequently the case, explicitly use its economic and military muscle to try to ward off strategic Chinese investment in Guyana. For Ali’s government, it’s not as simple as turning wholesale to the US. Chinese capital has played an important role in Guyana’s economic development, and the PPP government will likely try to balance Chinese investment with US political and military support. While the US won’t be thrilled about government figures courting Chinese companies, as when President Ali visited China this past May, the US sees a fairly reliable and commercially-oriented partner in the PPP, particularly when it comes to energy development.

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