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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Russian gas giant could use T&T's LNG trains

- Bloomberg re­ports

by

News Desk
2214 days ago
20190620
Russian gas giant Rosneft PJSC has been granted two gas fields by Venezuela, which are only 62 miles from Trinidad and Tobago.

Russian gas giant Rosneft PJSC has been granted two gas fields by Venezuela, which are only 62 miles from Trinidad and Tobago.

An ar­ti­cle car­ried by Man­hat­tan-based fi­nan­cial news ser­vice, Bloomberg, is sug­gest­ing that Russ­ian state-con­trolled gas gi­ant Ros­neft PJSC could seek to de­vel­op close ties with Trinidad and To­ba­go, to pro­duce gas from two gas fields giv­en to it by Venezuela.

The ar­ti­cle sug­gests that Trinidad and To­ba­go's LNG trains in Point Fortin could be used to de­vel­op the gas for ex­port.

An ac­cord signed by both Rus­sia and Venezuela ear­li­er this month will give Ros­neft tax breaks to pro­duce and ex­port gas from the Patao and Mejil­lones fields off Venezuela’s east coast.

Bloomberg re­ports that the fields are es­ti­mat­ed to hold 6.4 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas and that the fields are less than 100 kilo­me­ters (62 miles) from Trinidad and To­ba­go, where de­clin­ing do­mes­tic out­put has left ex­port fa­cil­i­ties with spare ca­pac­i­ty that could be filled by out­put from Venezuela.

It says that Ros­neft would have two op­tions to ex­port the gas, one be­ing to build a liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas plant in Venezuela, and the oth­er, to pipe the gas to Trinidad where there are LNG trains with spare ca­pac­i­ty.

The ar­ti­cle states: "Venezuela doesn’t have LNG fa­cil­i­ties, An­tero Al­vara­do at the con­sult­ing firm Gas En­er­gy Latin Amer­i­ca said, and Rus­sia doesn’t have strong com­mer­cial ties to near­by Trinidad, the ob­vi­ous place to ini­tial­ly sell it. The deal sug­gests Rus­sia may push to have a big­ger pres­ence in Trinidad in the fu­ture."

The pos­si­bil­i­ty of Rus­sia de­vel­op­ing clos­er ties is al­ready caus­ing con­cern among some in Cara­cas, ac­cord­ing to the Bloomberg re­port.

The re­port notes: “Deep­ened Russ­ian in­volve­ment with re­gion­al en­er­gy pro­duc­er Trinidad is a cause for con­cern, Cara­cas Cap­i­tal Mar­kets, a bro­ker­age, said in a note to clients. The Rus­sians al­ready dom­i­nate gas pro­duc­tion in Asia and Eu­rope and are de­vel­op­ing mas­sive fur­ther ca­pac­i­ty in Siberia and the Arc­tic.”

Ros­neft has been pick­ing up Venezuela's oil com­pa­ny PDVSA's as­sets since 2011 when it bought the com­pa­ny’s stake the Ruhr Oel GmbH re­fin­ing com­pa­ny in Ger­many.

It went on to take stakes in three heavy oil project in the Orinoco basin, as well as two joint ven­tures in the Lake Mara­cai­bo re­gion.

Since 2014, Ros­neft has loaned about $6.5 bil­lion to Venezuela in ex­change for oil, ac­cord­ing to da­ta com­piled by Bloomberg. Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, has been re­pay­ing the loans by de­liv­er­ing bar­rels to Ros­neft, and had an out­stand­ing debt of about $1.8 bil­lion in the first quar­ter, ac­cord­ing to a com­pa­ny pre­sen­ta­tion.

As a re­sult of the changes signed by Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, Ros­neft and its sup­pli­ers will be ex­empt from val­ue-added and im­port tax­es to de­vel­op the two gas fields, which are near to where Exxon Mo­bil Corp. is rush­ing to ex­tract oil in neigh­bor­ing Guyana.

The agree­ment was filed on­line by the Russ­ian le­gal in­for­ma­tion web­site, which pub­lish­es or­ders by the pres­i­dent and ap­plied in­ter­na­tion­al treaties.

Ros­neft is al­so con­sid­er­ing en­ter­ing an­oth­er nat­ur­al gas block, known as Deltana 5, that’s much clos­er to a bor­der that’s been hot­ly con­test­ed, ac­cord­ing to two peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the plan.

Maduro has vowed to block Exxon from ex­plor­ing in the con­test­ed area.

Source: Bloomberg


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