Trinidad and To­ba­go’s nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion av­er­aged 2,541 MM­scf/d in 2025, a slight im­prove­ment from 2,539 MM­scf/d in 2024, ac­cord­ing to da­ta com­piled from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries’ Con­sol­i­dat­ed Month­ly Bul­letins.

The in­crease was mod­est, but it in­ter­rupt­ed the year-on-year de­cline record­ed since 2022, when pro­duc­tion av­er­aged 2,688 MM­scf/d. Out­put av­er­aged 2,590 MM­scf/d in 2023 be­fore eas­ing to 2,539 MM­scf/d in 2024.

For Jan­u­ary to March 2026, pro­duc­tion av­er­aged ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,427 MM­scf/d, based on MEEI’s pre­lim­i­nary month­ly pro­duc­tion fig­ures of 2,443 MM­scf/d in Jan­u­ary, 2,469 MM­scf/d in Feb­ru­ary and 2,368 MM­scf/d in March. That was about 4.5 per cent be­low the 2025 an­nu­al av­er­age, al­though three months of da­ta should not be tak­en as an in­di­ca­tion of where full-year pro­duc­tion will set­tle.

T&T is a ma­ture hy­dro­car­bon province, mak­ing the re­place­ment of de­clin­ing out­put from ex­ist­ing fields an im­por­tant part of main­tain­ing over­all sup­ply. New projects can add pro­duc­tion, but those vol­umes must al­so off­set de­clines else­where in the up­stream sys­tem.

BP’s Cypre de­vel­op­ment is one re­cent ad­di­tion. First gas was achieved in April 2025, and all sev­en wells were sub­se­quent­ly com­plet­ed. At peak, bpTT ex­pects Cypre to de­liv­er around 250 MM­scf/d through its ex­ist­ing Ju­niper plat­form.

The need for ad­di­tion­al sup­ply ex­tends be­yond the up­stream sec­tor. T&T has es­tab­lished LNG and petro­chem­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture that de­pends on re­li­able gas pro­duc­tion. De­clin­ing do­mes­tic sup­plies have con­strained At­lantic LNG and the wider petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor, in­creas­ing the im­por­tance of bring­ing new projects in­to pro­duc­tion.

At the same time, the glob­al mar­ket for nat­ur­al gas con­tin­ues to ex­pand. The En­er­gy In­sti­tute’s Sta­tis­ti­cal Re­view of World En­er­gy 2026 re­port­ed that glob­al gas de­mand grew by 1.6 per cent in 2025, al­though growth dif­fered con­sid­er­ably by re­gion.

For T&T, ad­di­tion­al gas could sup­port greater util­i­sa­tion of LNG, am­mo­nia and methanol ca­pac­i­ty al­ready in place.

One of the largest near-term ad­di­tions to T&T’s do­mes­tic gas sup­ply is Shell’s Man­a­tee project.

Shell took a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion in Ju­ly 2024 and is tar­get­ing first pro­duc­tion in 2027.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is al­so pur­su­ing re­sources that cross its mar­itime bound­ary with Venezuela or are lo­cat­ed en­tire­ly in Venezue­lan wa­ters.

The Man­akin-Cocuina field strad­dles the T&T-Venezuela bound­ary and con­tains ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1 tcf of nat­ur­al gas re­serves. About two-thirds of the field lies on the Trinidad and To­ba­go side.

In Au­gust 2026, bp agreed to sell NGC a 20 per cent in­ter­est in the Trinidad-side Man­akin block. NGC al­ready holds a 20 per cent in­ter­est in Cocuina on the Venezue­lan side, giv­ing the state com­pa­ny a po­si­tion on both sides of the cross-bor­der de­vel­op­ment.

The project is pro­gress­ing to­wards a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion. BP and NGC have agreed to mar­ket 70 per cent of its gas to At­lantic LNG, with the re­main­ing 30% in­tend­ed for the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.

The much larg­er Lo­ran-Man­a­tee re­source is al­so pro­gress­ing. Man­a­tee is the T&T por­tion of the reser­voir, while Lo­ran lies in Venezue­lan wa­ters.

Shell se­cured the li­cence for the first phase of Lo­ran in June 2026. In Au­gust, bp, XRG and UCC Hold­ing se­cured a li­cence to ex­plore and de­vel­op Phase Two, with bp as op­er­a­tor. The two phas­es are ex­pect­ed to be de­vel­oped in par­al­lel. Reuters re­port­ed to­tal Lo­ran re­serves of around 7.3 tcf.

Drag­on pro­vides an­oth­er po­ten­tial source of gas. The field lies in Venezue­lan wa­ters and con­tains about 4.2 tcf, ac­cord­ing to re­cent Reuters re­port­ing. Shell has be­gun prepar­ing for drilling, tar­get­ing the sec­ond quar­ter of 2027, sub­ject to a pos­i­tive fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion. Gas from Drag­on is planned to be trans­port­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go for pro­cess­ing.

T&T av­er­aged more than 3,500 MM­scf/d in 2018 and 2019, com­pared with rough­ly 2,500 MM­scf/d in re­cent years.

A re­turn to ear­li­er pro­duc­tion lev­els will de­pend not on­ly on bring­ing new projects on­line, but on whether those vol­umes are suf­fi­cient to off­set de­cline from ex­ist­ing fields. Man­a­tee pro­vides a sig­nif­i­cant near-term op­por­tu­ni­ty from 2027, while Man­akin-Cocuina could add fur­ther do­mes­tic and cross-bor­der sup­ply.

Lo­ran and Drag­on could com­ple­ment those projects by bring­ing Venezue­lan gas in­to T&T’s ex­ist­ing pro­cess­ing net­work.

To­geth­er, the projects pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­prove gas avail­abil­i­ty at a time when glob­al de­mand con­tin­ues to grow and T&T has LNG and petro­chem­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture ca­pa­ble of us­ing ad­di­tion­al sup­ply.