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