En­er­gy gi­ant BP Plc an­nounced yes­ter­day that it is en­gaged in pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing the de­vel­op­ment of a gas field that ex­tends from Trinidad and To­ba­go to Venezuela.

This con­fir­ma­tion fol­lows a meet­ing be­tween the Venezue­lan Oil Min­is­ter and BP to ex­plore the po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment of the Man­akin and Cocuina fields as a uni­fied project in Cara­cas on Thurs­day.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young was al­so in Venezuela for the meet­ing and spoke on the project in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

“Yes­ter­day and the day be­fore I was in Venezuela along with BP con­duct­ing con­tin­ued con­ver­sa­tions, ne­go­ti­a­tions on be­half of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go for a project now with BP and Venezuela called Cocuina/Man­akin. That is the news that is top of the news in the glob­al en­er­gy re­ports of to­day,” Young said.

BP cur­rent­ly op­er­ates the Man­akin field, which is sit­u­at­ed in T&T wa­ters. The Lon­don-based oil com­pa­ny is eval­u­at­ing busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties in Venezuela amidst the Unit­ed States’ re­newed threats of sanc­tions on the Venezue­lan oil in­dus­try.

De­spite this, ma­jor oil com­pa­nies are op­ti­mistic that the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion will not im­pose stricter sanc­tions on Venezuela’s en­er­gy sec­tor be­fore the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, even as Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro re­treats from de­mo­c­ra­t­ic con­ces­sions.

Venezuela is re­port­ed to be will­ing to grant BP and CNP joint or sep­a­rate li­cens­es for ex­plo­ration, de­vel­op­ment, and ex­port.

Tech­ni­cal as­pects of the Man­akin and Cocuina fields were re­viewed dur­ing a meet­ing held by del­e­ga­tions on Thurs­day.

BP, which was once a promi­nent play­er in Venezuela, had di­vest­ed its three oil fields and one up­grad­er to a Ros­neft sub­sidiary in 2010.

A state­ment is­sued by the En­er­gy Min­istry said that oth­er of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Pene­lope Brad­shaw-Niles and ex­ec­u­tives of Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) al­so at­tend­ed the meet­ing.

Pres­i­dent of bpTT, David Camp­bell was al­so there.

Pop­u­lar Pow­er for Pe­tro­le­um Min­is­ter Rafael Tel­lechea and his vice-min­is­ter Juan San­tana rep­re­sent­ed the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment.

The state­ment added, “The pre­sen­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions, in­clud­ing the ex­change of tech­ni­cal in­for­ma­tion and ne­go­ti­a­tion of le­gal terms and con­di­tions, ad­vance the in­tend­ed project of de­vel­op­ing this hy­dro­car­bon field. We con­tin­ue to work as­sid­u­ous­ly to en­sure the fu­ture of T&T.”

In De­cem­ber, Shell an­nounced plans to ex­port gas from the Venezue­lan-Trinida­di­an off­shore gas field known as Drag­on.

Most of those re­serves are in Venezue­lan wa­ters.