It is pro­ject­ed that pro­duc­tion from the T&T/Venezuela cross bor­der Lo­ran Man­a­tee project can be­gin some­time be­tween 2017 and 2020, says En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine. Re­ply­ing to an Op­po­si­tion ques­tion in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, Ra­man­rine said the field was one of three in the project.

He said pro­duc­tion was pro­ject­ed sub­ject to the re­quired ap­provals. Ram­nar­ine out­lined what had tran­spired with the project un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing move­ment on agree­ments on the is­sue and meet­ings on that. He said a an­oth­er meet­ing would be held next month where a Unit Di­rect­ing Com­mit­tee, com­pris­ing all stake­hold­ers-both gov­ern­ments and com­pa­nies-would be fi­nalised.

A unit di­rec­tor al­so would be se­lect­ed to pre­pare a de­vel­op­ment plan for the field for con­sid­er­a­tion by the com­mit­tee. PNM Sen­a­tor Ter­rence Deyals­ingh not­ed that most of the is­sues Ram­nar­ine had re­lat­ed over 2010 and 2011 on the project had been done un­der pre­vi­ous En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan.

Deyals­ingh asked Ram­nar­ine what he had done. Ram­nar­ine re­lat­ed meet­ings he had held with Venezue­lan of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing the Venezue­lan En­er­gy Min­is­ter, on the is­sue. (Gail Alexan­der)