You would not usually expect an energy conference to feature both the author of a historical novel and a painter, but we like to be a bit different at the Trinidad & Tobago Energy Conference. We are sure that Amanda Smyth (the novelist) and Krishna Persad (the painter) are going to offer something exciting and stimulating at this year’s edition of the Conference.
Amanda Smyth has deep family roots in Trinidad’s oilfields and, like many people associated with the Energy Chamber, she has personal connections to the Dome Fire of 1927, the central incident around which her historical novel Fortune is based. Fortune, her third novel, has been critically acclaimed and has been shortlisted for the renowned Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction (with the winner to be announced on June 17th 2022).
The protagonist of the novel is based on the oil pioneer Bobby Wade, fictionalised to Eddie Wade in Amanda’s novel, which tells the story of his pursuit of his fortune through the drill bit on the Dome oil field in south Trinidad. As everyone associated with the oil industry in Trinidad knows, the story inexorably leads to the worst oil field accident in our history and the tragic death of seventeen people.
Pursuit of oil and taking financial risk is something that Dr. Krishna Persad knows all about. He is a renowned geologist and “oil man” who has literally bet his house on oil finds at least three times in his long career as an entrepreneur and “oil man”. He is also the founder of the Energy Conference, in its original form as the Petroleum Congress back in the 1980s. And he is also a painter, a passion from his youth that he has rediscovered in his retirement. Krishna has produced a series of paintings on the history of the oil and gas industry in Trinidad & Tobago, from earliest beginnings in the nineteenth century through to today.
Of course, one of his paintings had to be of the Dome fire. This painting and over twenty others will be displayed in the Port of Spain Room at the Hyatt Hotel over the three days of the Conference.
Krishna will also join us on the stage, at the Networking breakfast session on 1st June 2022, in the Port of Spain Ballroom, when our President/CEO Dax Driver interviews Amanda Smyth (who will join us virtually) about her novel and about taking risk, desire and fortune hunting.
Fortune is published by Peepal Press and copies will be available at the Conference for sale.
Krishna Persad’s exhibition will be displayed at the Energy Conference between 31st May 2022 - 2nd June 2022 in the Port of Spain Ballroom, Hyatt Hotel, Port of Spain.
Members of the public who are not attending the Conference can visit between 9 am and 12 noon on 2nd June 2022.
Amanda Smyth
Fortune by Amanda Smyth
Krishna Persad, Self Portrait
