The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) has held dis­cus­sions with bp Trinidad and To­ba­go (bpTT) and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (NGC) on the de­vel­op­ment of the Man­akin/Cocuina cross-bor­der nat­ur­al gas project.

The meet­ing was led by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal and in­clud­ed Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Karin­sa Tulsie and Act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Ava Ma­habir-Dass, along with of­fi­cials from the min­istry, bpTT and NGC.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the dis­cus­sions fo­cused on the sta­tus and de­vel­op­ment of the Man­akin/Cocuina nat­ur­al gas re­source, as well as op­por­tu­ni­ties for fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion among the Gov­ern­ment, bpTT and NGC to ad­vance the project.

The Man­akin/Cocuina field is a nat­ur­al gas re­source that strad­dles the mar­itime bound­ary be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela.

The lat­est en­gage­ment comes as the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues dis­cus­sions on the po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment of the cross-bor­der re­source and its pos­si­ble con­tri­bu­tion to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s nat­ur­al gas sec­tor.

Mooni­lal stressed the im­por­tance of con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion among the stake­hold­ers as Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­am­ines op­por­tu­ni­ties for what the min­istry de­scribed as the re­spon­si­ble de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try’s nat­ur­al gas re­sources.

The min­istry said the dis­cus­sions are al­so part of ef­forts to strength­en the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The Man­akin/Cocuina re­source has been the sub­ject of ef­forts to fa­cil­i­tate cross-bor­der gas de­vel­op­ment, with its lo­ca­tion pre­sent­ing both com­mer­cial and reg­u­la­to­ry con­sid­er­a­tions for Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela.

The meet­ing did not an­nounce a fi­nal de­vel­op­ment agree­ment or pro­vide de­tails on a project time­line, pro­duc­tion vol­umes or the com­mer­cial terms be­ing con­sid­ered.

In­stead, the min­istry said the en­gage­ment was fo­cused on ad­vanc­ing dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the re­source and iden­ti­fy­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The Gov­ern­ment has been seek­ing to max­imise avail­able nat­ur­al gas re­sources amid chal­lenges fac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s gas-based in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing de­clin­ing do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion and con­straints on feed­stock avail­abil­i­ty.

The min­istry said it will con­tin­ue work­ing with the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers as dis­cus­sions on the Man­akin/Cocuina project progress.