Sri Lanka and the European Union have discussed proposals to establish a green energy hub at Trincomalee Port, with Ports, Civil Aviation and Energy Minister Anura Karunathilaka stressing that a feasibility study is needed to assess the initiative, the Daily Mirror reported at 3.36 p.m. on Wednesday.
The talks were held at the Ministry with an EU delegation led by Peteris Ustubs, the European Commission’s Director for the Asia-Pacific region. Deputy Minister Janitha Ruwan Kodithukku and Ministry Secretary W.W.S. Mangala also took part.
The delegation commended the government’s work on renewable energy generation and energy storage technologies and said it wanted to explore ways of supporting Sri Lanka’s green transition. Karunathilaka briefed it on renewable projects now being implemented. The two sides also discussed developing container terminals at the Port of Colombo, and potential EU support for port projects under the bloc’s Global Gateway programme.
One harbour, two incompatible plans
The filing presents the Trincomalee proposal as a fresh idea. It is not the only one on that harbour, and the other is considerably further advanced.
Sri Lanka, India and the United Arab Emirates signed a trilateral agreement to develop Trincomalee as a regional energy hub — a multi-product oil pipeline linking India and Sri Lanka, plus a petroleum storage complex at Trincomalee. In April this year, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said in Colombo that there was “no further time to lose” on the project, which has been under discussion since 2023. He argued its value explicitly in fossil-fuel terms, saying the facility “could have been particularly useful at a time like this” during the Hormuz supply disruption.
So two partnerships are now courting the same port with opposite energy logics: an Indian–Emirati petroleum storage and pipeline hub with a signed trilateral agreement behind it, and a European green energy hub at the proposal-and-feasibility stage. Neither project’s reporting acknowledges the other. Whether they are intended as competing uses of the same land and deepwater frontage, complementary parts of one energy complex, or simply two sets of talks that have not been reconciled is not addressed anywhere.
Trincomalee’s attraction is the same in both cases — one of the largest natural deepwater harbours in the region, with existing tank-farm infrastructure and proximity to the wind resource of the north.
Global Gateway keeps being discussed and never costed
This is at least the fourth time in 2026 that Global Gateway has come up in a Sri Lankan government setting, and the pattern is consistent.
At the ministerial investment dialogue in August, both sides “explored cooperation under the EU’s Global Gateway strategy, though no specific projects or financing commitments were announced.” An EU–Sri Lanka business roundtable in May convened under the theme of Global Gateway and the island’s role as a regional maritime and logistics hub. The one Global Gateway instrument in Sri Lanka with a number attached is the EU-funded Green Recovery Facility, a €5 million programme implemented by Expertise France covering sustainable energy, the circular economy, climate action and sustainable finance.
Wednesday’s filing again carries no figure, no instrument and no timetable. Against €5 million in committed facility funding, a port-scale energy hub is a different order of magnitude, and nothing in the account indicates which side would fund the feasibility study the Minister called for.
The EU is not a marginal partner: the European Commission recorded it as Sri Lanka’s second-largest goods trading partner in 2025 at 12.5% of total goods trade, with two-way goods trade of €3.9 billion and a €1.9 billion deficit on the EU side. The current GSP+ cycle expires on 31 December, which places these infrastructure conversations in the same quarter as the renewal of the island’s main trade preference.
The container terminals are already being privatised
The delegation’s interest in “developing container terminals to enhance the capacity and efficiency of the Port of Colombo” arrives in the middle of a live restructuring, which the filing does not mention.
President Dissanayake told the Ceylon Chamber’s summit on Monday that the East Container Terminal’s management and operating rights are to go to a private partner with the state retaining ownership, and a fourth newsroom has since reported that Cabinet decided to set up a company to run it with shares offered to private investors. The West Container Terminal II breakwater has risen to about US$1.4 billion from US$1.1 billion, with Asian Development Bank reporting due in December and April.
Whether the EU’s interest concerns those same terminals, the tender process now forming around them, or additional capacity is not stated.
Not reported
No cost, financing instrument, site, capacity or timetable is given for the Trincomalee green energy hub, and the filing does not say who proposed it, who would commission or pay for the feasibility study, or when it might begin. “Green energy hub” is not defined — whether it means green hydrogen or ammonia production for export, grid-scale storage, renewable generation for domestic supply, or a bunkering function for green marine fuels is left open, and these imply very different projects.
The account gives no EU financing figure, does not say whether the delegation carried any mandate to commit funds, and does not report Sri Lanka’s response on the container terminals. It does not say which renewable projects the Minister described, whether the oil hub was raised in the same meeting, or whether the Ministry of Energy’s Trincomalee commitments to India and the UAE were disclosed to the delegation. Ustubs’s wider itinerary and the duration of the visit are not reported.
This article is single-sourced. After a search of the verified newsrooms, no other had filed on the meeting at the time of writing — including the government’s own news.lk.
