Trinidad Was Richer Than Guyana for 60 Years. Not Anymore.

Trinidad and Tobago's economy, explained: for sixty years Trinidad was richer per person than Guyana, and in 2023 Guyana passed it. Why Trinidad's money was never really oil but natural gas (LNG from Point Fortin, fertiliser from Point Lisas), why the gas slowed, and whether Trinidad is going broke. Trinidad got rich twice. Oil peaked in 1978 and its biggest refinery, Pointe-à-Pierre (Petrotrin), shut in 2018. The second fortune was gas, chilled into liquid (LNG) and shipped to America, which for a few years bought about seven in every ten tankers of liquid gas it imported from Trinidad. Then America found gas at home, and Trinidad's own gas output fell by about two fifths from 2010 to 2025, even though the official audit says the gas is not running out. Who gets paid? BP and Shell hold about seven in ten cubic feet of the audited gas and most of the export plant; the government is paid through taxes and royalties, and energy money fell from 16% to under 10% of the economy. Dollars are short, but Trinidad is not broke: a $6.4 billion rainy-day fund (the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund) and lenders who offered 2.5 times what it asked. Next: Shell's Manatee gas field in 2027. Chapters 0:00 Trinidad vs Guyana: richer for 60 years, passed in 2023 0:36 The first fortune: Trinidad's oil boom and the 1978 peak 1:24 The second fortune: natural gas, LNG and Point Lisas 2:22 America stops buying Trinidad's gas 3:17 Is Trinidad running out of gas? The audit, Atlantic LNG and Nutrien 4:28 Who owns Trinidad's gas: BP, Shell and the state's cut 5:29 A rich country short of dollars: reserves, the TT dollar, debt 6:30 Is Trinidad going broke? The Heritage and Stabilisation Fund 7:26 Shell's Manatee field and the Venezuelan gas 8:11 Will Trinidad catch Guyana again? Sources World Bank (GDP per person) · IMF 2026 Article IV (Press Release 26/159, concluding statement) and World Economic Outlook · US Energy Information Administration (US LNG imports; 2017 net exporter) · Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries (annual oil and gas production 1908–2018; 2021–22 gas audit, May 2024) · Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (Economic DataPack, March 2026) · Ministry of Finance (Review of the Economy 2025) · National Gas Company (11 Dec 2024) · Nutrien (21 Oct 2025) · Shell (Manatee FID, 9 Jul 2024). Map Our own basemap. Land cover: © ESA WorldCover project 2021 / Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021) processed by ESA WorldCover consortium (CC BY 4.0). Relief: NASA/METI ASTER GDEM. Sea: NASA Blue Marble. Boundaries: Natural Earth (public domain). Hatched or dashed areas are disputed: west of the Essequibo River (dashed line), administered by Guyana and claimed by Venezuela; the Tigri area / New River Triangle (hatched), administered by Guyana and claimed by Suriname. Photographs (Wikimedia Commons) Pointe-à-Pierre refinery, San Fernando — Christianwelsh, public domain LNG carrier Shahamah — 青空白帆, CC BY 2.1 JP Flags of Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and the United States — public domain Thumbnail photographs: Pexels (Kenrick Baksh, Dominik Gryzbon, Rudi Singh). Video: Pexels (Rudi Singh, Kevin Krämer, Andres Ormaechea, Aaron Hairston, Dio Hasbi Saniskoro, Jeronimo Borra, Mikhail Nilov, Nathanael Arias, Ilyas Mohamed, Davy Wong, Pressmaster, Rafael Minguet Delgado, Toàn BDS) and Pixabay contributors. Apart from the Mount St Benedict opening shot, stock footage is illustrative, not Trinidad's own plants or fields. Sound effects: Pixabay Content License (Universfield, DRAGON-STUDIO, freesound_community, KoiRoylers, Audley_Fergine). Music: original, made for this channel. This channel explains how places make money. It is not financial advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything. #TrinidadAndTobago #Guyana #NaturalGas