By An­tho­ny E Paul

NGC’s ac­qui­si­tion of a 20 per cent in­ter­est in Man­akin could be ex­act­ly the kind of na­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go should have been pur­su­ing for years. But af­ter al­most three decades of ex­ten­sions, amend­ments, sunk ex­pen­di­ture and Gov­ern­ment ap­provals, the head­line num­ber is not enough. Be­fore we cel­e­brate, the coun­try de­serves to know what NGC paid, what BP had al­ready re­cov­ered, what the State re­ceived for ex­tend­ing the con­tract - and what else may now be on the ta­ble.

There is much to like about the an­nounce­ment that the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny has ac­quired a 20 per cent par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est in Block 5(b), which con­tains the Man­akin gas field.

For years I have ar­gued that Trinidad and To­ba­go does not have to choose be­tween for­eign in­vest­ment and na­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion. We can leave tech­ni­cal­ly ca­pa­ble in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies as op­er­a­tors while us­ing our own­er­ship of the re­source, our con­trac­tu­al rights and our ne­go­ti­at­ing lever­age to se­cure eq­ui­ty, re­serves, in­come and ca­pa­bil­i­ty for na­tion­al com­pa­nies.

On the face of it, Man­akin looks like pre­cise­ly such an out­come.

NGC al­ready holds 20 per cent of Cocuina, the Venezue­lan por­tion of the same cross-bor­der ac­cu­mu­la­tion. BP says the uni­ti­sa­tion al­lo­cates 66 per cent of the dis­cov­ered re­source to Man­akin in T&T and 34 per cent to Cocuina in Venezuela. Giv­ing NGC a cor­re­spond­ing 20 per cent in­ter­est in Man­akin there­fore cre­ates much greater align­ment across the uni­tised field.

NGC it­self now de­scribes the ac­qui­si­tion as his­toric and ground­break­ing. Its Au­gust 11 re­lease con­firms that it has ac­quired a 20 per cent par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est in the Block 5(b) Pro­duc­tion Shar­ing Con­tract, rather than mere­ly some en­ti­tle­ment to gas from Man­akin. It al­so con­firms that the in­ter­est will be held through NGC Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion Lim­it­ed.

That is po­ten­tial­ly im­por­tant.

But “20 per cent” tells us al­most noth­ing about whether this is a good deal.

How much did NGC pay?

Nei­ther NGC’s re­lease nor the Prime Min­is­ter’s speech tells us. Reuters de­scribes the trans­ac­tion as BP agree­ing to sell a 20 per cent stake to NGC, but no con­sid­er­a­tion has been pub­licly dis­closed.

Be­fore any­one de­clares vic­to­ry-or fail­ure-we need that num­ber.

And then we need to ask a more un­com­fort­able ques­tion:

Should NGC have had to pay very much at all?

Who paid to cre­ate the val­ue?

That ques­tion re­quires care.

A Pro­duc­tion Shar­ing Con­tract (PSC) is not an or­di­nary prop­er­ty trans­ac­tion. The re­source be­longs to the State. The con­trac­tor puts up cap­i­tal, takes ex­plo­ration risk and, if nat­ur­al gas is found and pro­duced, nor­mal­ly re­cov­ers qual­i­fy­ing costs through the con­trac­tu­al cost-re­cov­ery mech­a­nism be­fore the re­main­ing val­ue is di­vid­ed ac­cord­ing to the PSC.

That does not mean Gov­ern­ment writes BP a cheque.

But cost re­cov­ery is not free to the coun­try ei­ther. Pe­tro­le­um al­lo­cat­ed to re­cov­er con­trac­tor costs is val­ue from the re­source that is not oth­er­wise avail­able for dis­tri­b­u­tion to the State.

So be­fore say­ing that T&T has now “bought” 20 per cent of Man­akin from BP, some­body should pro­duce the Block 5(b) cost-re­cov­ery ac­count.

How much was spent dis­cov­er­ing and ap­prais­ing Man­akin? Which ex­pen­di­tures were ac­cept­ed as re­cov­er­able costs? How much has al­ready been re­cov­ered? How much re­mains un­re­cov­ered? What his­tor­i­cal cost pool, if any, is NGC now in­her­it­ing with its 20 per cent in­ter­est?

We should not as­sume the an­swer.

Man­akin it­self has not yet been pro­duc­ing, and the pub­lic doc­u­ments avail­able to me do not es­tab­lish whether the rel­e­vant ex­plo­ration and ap­praisal ex­pen­di­tures have al­ready been re­cov­ered un­der the PSC, how they were treat­ed, or what amount re­mains out­stand­ing.

That dis­tinc­tion is crit­i­cal.

If sub­stan­tial his­toric costs re­main un­re­cov­ered, NGC may be ac­quir­ing both 20 per cent of the as­set and 20 per cent of as­so­ci­at­ed li­a­bil­i­ties or cost oblig­a­tions.

If those costs have al­ready been sub­stan­tial­ly re­cov­ered, the eco­nom­ics are quite dif­fer­ent.

And if they have been ful­ly re­cov­ered, the ques­tion be­comes sharp­er still: why should the na­tion­al com­pa­ny pay full mar­ket val­ue to­day for an in­ter­est in an as­set whose ex­plo­ration and ap­praisal costs have al­ready been re­cov­ered from pe­tro­le­um be­long­ing to the coun­try?

That does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly mean the in­ter­est should have been trans­ferred for noth­ing. BP has con­trac­tu­al rights and an in­ter­est in the fu­ture eco­nom­ics of the field. But it means the price can­not sen­si­bly be eval­u­at­ed with­out see­ing the his­to­ry of the costs and the his­to­ry of the con­ces­sions made by Gov­ern­ment.

That brings us to the ex­ten­sions.

What did we get for all those ex­ten­sions?

Man­akin was dis­cov­ered in 2000. It has there­fore been known for more than a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry.

The Block 5(b) PSC it­self be­came ef­fec­tive in Jan­u­ary 1997. Over the years, Gov­ern­ment re­peat­ed­ly al­lowed the con­trac­tor more time to re­tain and com­mer­cialise the dis­cov­ery. The Min­istry’s own PSC chronol­o­gy records suc­ces­sive ex­ten­sions and amend­ments to the mar­ket-de­vel­op­ment pe­ri­od, as well as a lat­er amend­ment ex­tend­ing the PSC to 31 De­cem­ber 2030.

This changes the way we should look at the present an­nounce­ment.

The is­sue is not sim­ply whether Block 5(b) was about to ex­pire in 2026. The ev­i­dence says it was not: Gov­ern­ment had al­ready ex­tend­ed it to the end of 2030. 4

What did T&T re­ceive in re­turn for ex­tend­ing it to 2030?

That should be know­able.

What com­mit­ments did the con­trac­tors make? Were there ad­di­tion­al seis­mic com­mit­ments? Ap­praisal wells? En­gi­neer­ing stud­ies? De­vel­op­ment mile­stones? Com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion dead­lines? Fi­nan­cial pay­ments? Do­mes­tic gas com­mit­ments? Re­lin­quish­ment oblig­a­tions?

Were those com­mit­ments ful­filled?

If wells were promised, were they drilled? If stud­ies were promised, what did they es­tab­lish? If ex­pen­di­ture was com­mit­ted, how much was ac­tu­al­ly spent? If the pur­pose of grant­i­ng more time was to move Man­akin to­wards pro­duc­tion, did that hap­pen at the pace en­vis­aged when the ex­ten­sion was ap­proved?

This is not crit­i­cism for its own sake.

Some­times ex­ten­sions are en­tire­ly jus­ti­fied. Gas dis­cov­er­ies can be par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to mon­e­tise be­cause a reser­voir with­out a mar­ket, pipeline or down­stream out­let can re­main com­mer­cial­ly strand­ed for years.

Man­akin was ad­di­tion­al­ly com­pli­cat­ed be­cause Cocuina lies across an in­ter­na­tion­al bound­ary. The gov­ern­ments had to agree on al­lo­ca­tion and uni­ti­sa­tion, Venezuela had to cre­ate the cor­re­spond­ing con­trac­tu­al frame­work, and even­tu­al­ly US sanc­tions added an­oth­er lay­er of dif­fi­cul­ty.

All le­git­i­mate ex­pla­na­tions.

But an ex­pla­na­tion is not the same thing as ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Every ex­ten­sion trans­fers some­thing of eco­nom­ic val­ue: time and con­tin­ued ex­clu­siv­i­ty over an in­creas­ing­ly de-risked na­tion­al re­source.

The State should there­fore record what it re­ceives in re­turn.

That prin­ci­ple has been cen­tral to my ear­li­er crit­i­cism of the way T&T has han­dled pe­tro­le­um li­cence re­newals. Once a com­pa­ny has dis­cov­ered pe­tro­le­um, drilled wells, ac­quired seis­mic and es­tab­lished in­fra­struc­ture, the acreage be­ing re­newed is not the acreage orig­i­nal­ly award­ed. Much of the ex­plo­ration risk has dis­ap­peared. The as­set has ac­quired val­ue.

When li­cences are re­newed, the State has op­tions to con­vert some of that de-risked val­ue in­to na­tion­al eq­ui­ty.

Per­haps that is fi­nal­ly what hap­pened here.

If Gov­ern­ment used BP’s need to progress Man­akin–Cocuina, se­cure ap­provals, move to­wards FID (fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion) and pre­serve its rights through 2030 to ne­go­ti­ate an at­trac­tive 20 per cent po­si­tion for NGC, that de­serves cred­it.

But tell us.

Good out­come, per­haps. Good deal? We don’t know yet.

There is an­oth­er num­ber miss­ing.

NGC is not mere­ly ac­quir­ing up­side. A 20 per cent par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est nor­mal­ly means par­tic­i­pa­tion in costs as well.

Cocuina–Man­akin still has to reach fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion. Reuters re­ports that the project is pro­gress­ing to­wards FID and that BP and NGC plan to mar­ket 70 per cent of the gas to At­lantic LNG, with the re­main­ing 30 per cent go­ing to petro­chem­i­cals:

*How much will de­vel­op­ment cost?

* What is NGC’s share?

* Does NGC have to fund 20 per cent from day one?

* Is BP car­ry­ing NGC through any por­tion of de­vel­op­ment?

* Has NGC in­her­it­ed his­tor­i­cal costs?

* What re­turn does NGC ex­pect on the cap­i­tal it will in­vest?

The an­swers could turn the same “20 per cent” in­to sev­er­al quite dif­fer­ent propo­si­tions.

A 20 per cent in­ter­est ac­quired for nom­i­nal con­sid­er­a­tion, per­haps ac­com­pa­nied by a car­ry, could be enor­mous­ly valu­able.

A 20 per cent in­ter­est pur­chased at full mar­ket val­ue, with NGC re­quired im­me­di­ate­ly to fi­nance hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars of de­vel­op­ment ex­pen­di­ture, is still po­ten­tial­ly a good in­vest­ment - but it is a very dif­fer­ent achieve­ment.

Trans­paren­cy does not un­der­mine a good deal.

It proves that it is one.

And then there is Do­ra­do

Man­akin–Cocuina should al­so cause us to look a lit­tle far­ther along the bor­der, at oth­er fields dis­cov­ered in the 1980s.

NGC it­self has iden­ti­fied three cross-bor­der reser­voir sys­tems be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela: Lo­ran–Man­a­tee, Man­akin–Cocuina and Kapok–Do­ra­do. 8

Kapok (3-4 tcf) is al­ready an im­por­tant Trinidad and To­ba­go pro­duc­ing field. Do­ra­do is its Venezue­lan ex­ten­sion, with re­port­ed re­serves of 1.4 tcf.

This is hard­ly a new idea. Pub­lic re­port­ing years ago iden­ti­fied Kapok–Do­ra­do as one of the log­i­cal fields to fol­low Lo­ran–Man­a­tee, along­side Man­akin–Cocuina. A draft in­ter-gov­ern­men­tal agree­ment for Kapok–Do­ra­do had al­so been pre­pared by 2020:

* So where is Do­ra­do to­day?

* Is it part of the present dis­cus­sions with Cara­cas?

* Has the al­lo­ca­tion across the bor­der been fi­nalised?

* Who would op­er­ate it?

If NGC is now be­ing po­si­tioned with 20 per cent across Man­akin–Cocuina, is a sim­i­lar na­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion be­ing con­tem­plat­ed in Kapok–Do­ra­do?

There is no pub­lic ev­i­dence I can find that NGC has al­ready ac­quired, or has been promised, an in­ter­est in Do­ra­do. It would there­fore be wrong to sug­gest that it has.

But it is pre­cise­ly the ques­tion we should now be ask­ing.

Be­cause a suc­cess­ful Man­akin–Cocuina ne­go­ti­a­tion ought not to be treat­ed as an iso­lat­ed trans­ac­tion. It should tell us some­thing about the strat­e­gy be­ing de­vel­oped for the en­tire cross-bor­der port­fo­lio.

Some­thing else may be hap­pen­ing—and that is good news

Per­haps the most en­cour­ag­ing part of all this is not the 20 per cent.

It is the ev­i­dence that, de­spite all the po­lit­i­cal tur­bu­lence of the last two years, com­mer­cial and diplo­mat­ic chan­nels in­volv­ing Port of Spain, Cara­cas and the com­pa­nies ap­pear to be func­tion­ing again.

That mat­ters enor­mous­ly.

Cocuina could not move with­out Venezuela. Drag­on can­not move with­out Venezuela. Lo­ran can­not sen­si­bly be in­te­grat­ed with Man­a­tee with­out Venezuela. Do­ra­do can­not be ad­dressed with­out Venezuela.

Shell has been ad­vanc­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions and agree­ments in Venezuela dur­ing 2026, in­clud­ing on Lo­ran and Drag­on. In June, Reuters re­port­ed five agree­ments be­tween Shell and Venezuela, in­clud­ing arrange­ments to ad­vance Lo­ran. Shell has al­so be­gun ten­der­ing for drilling ser­vices for Drag­on, with drilling con­tem­plat­ed from 2027.

Those are not the ac­tions one would ex­pect if com­mer­cial re­la­tions were com­plete­ly frozen.

And that brings us back to Drag­on.

The Venezue­lan Drag­on Field Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion Li­cence was signed on 21 De­cem­ber 2023 be­tween NGC Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion Lim­it­ed, Shell Venezuela S.A. and Venezuela’s pe­tro­le­um au­thor­i­ties. NGC con­firmed the sign­ing at the time.

It was sub­se­quent­ly pub­lished in Venezuela’s Gac­eta Ofi­cial Ex­tra­or­di­nar­ia No. 6.793 on 29 Jan­u­ary 2024, un­der Res­o­lu­tion No. 0037, nam­ing NGC and Shell as li­censees.

That dis­tinc­tion is im­por­tant be­cause the Unit­ed States sub­se­quent­ly re­voked the OFAC au­tho­ri­sa­tion in April 2025. That was an Amer­i­can sanc­tions li­cence; it was not the same le­gal in­stru­ment as Venezuela’s E&P li­cence.

As of now, I can find no pub­lic Venezue­lan Gazette no­tice re­vok­ing the Drag­on E&P li­cence it­self. More im­por­tant­ly, sub­se­quent de­vel­op­ments point the oth­er way: Shell said in Feb­ru­ary 2026 that new US gen­er­al li­cences al­lowed it to progress Drag­on, and by Ju­ly it was ten­der­ing drilling work.

That does not guar­an­tee first gas.

Noth­ing about Drag­on has ever jus­ti­fied com­pla­cen­cy.

But it is a con­sid­er­ably bet­ter po­si­tion than hav­ing to re­build the en­tire le­gal re­la­tion­ship from ze­ro.

And if Port of Spain and Cara­cas are again able to sep­a­rate long-term na­tion­al in­ter­ests from the po­lit­i­cal dis­putes of the mo­ment, that may ul­ti­mate­ly prove more valu­able than any one press re­lease.

Pe­tro­le­um can­not be gov­erned one elec­tion at a time

This is where Man­akin be­comes larg­er than Man­akin.

The Block 5(b) sto­ry be­gan in 1997. The field was dis­cov­ered in 2000. Dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments ex­tend­ed the con­trac­tu­al timetable. Dif­fer­ent min­is­ters dealt with Venezuela. A uni­ti­sa­tion agree­ment was signed in 2015. Com­mer­cial­i­ty came lat­er. An­oth­er ex­ten­sion took the PSC to 2030. Venezuela li­censed Cocuina in 2024. US pol­i­cy first en­abled, then in­ter­rupt­ed, then en­abled work again. Now, in 2026, an­oth­er Trinidad and To­ba­go ad­min­is­tra­tion has com­plet­ed NGC’s en­try in­to Man­akin.

No sin­gle gov­ern­ment owns that his­to­ry.

Nor will the Gov­ern­ment sign­ing to­day’s agree­ment nec­es­sar­i­ly be in of­fice when the field pro­duces its last mol­e­cule of gas.

That is why pe­tro­le­um pol­i­cy be­comes dan­ger­ous when re­duced to a con­test over who gets cred­it for the an­nounce­ment.

Gov­ern­ments are tem­po­rary cus­to­di­ans of as­sets whose lives rou­tine­ly ex­ceed their own.

They can le­git­i­mate­ly dis­agree about pol­i­cy. One gov­ern­ment may want greater State par­tic­i­pa­tion; an­oth­er may pre­fer pri­vate in­vest­ment. They may dif­fer on fis­cal terms, do­mes­tic gas al­lo­ca­tion, LNG, petro­chem­i­cals or the role of NGC.

But the coun­try should at least agree on what it is try­ing to achieve: re­place­ment of re­serves, re­li­able gas sup­ply, max­i­mum sus­tain­able na­tion­al val­ue, stronger lo­cal com­pa­nies, com­pet­i­tive in­dus­try, de­vel­op­ment of na­tion­al ca­pa­bil­i­ty and con­ver­sion of fi­nite pe­tro­le­um wealth in­to some­thing that sur­vives af­ter the pe­tro­le­um is gone.

Then let po­lit­i­cal par­ties com­pete over who has the bet­ter plan, the more cred­i­ble strat­e­gy and the peo­ple ca­pa­ble of de­liv­er­ing it.

That is a health­i­er con­test than pre­tend­ing each pe­tro­le­um project be­gan on elec­tion night.

Show us the ledger

Man­akin there­fore gives us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do two things at once.

We can wel­come the fact that NGC now has a di­rect up­stream in­ter­est in a strate­gi­cal­ly im­por­tant field.

And we can in­sist up­on the in­for­ma­tion nec­es­sary to de­ter­mine whether the terms are as good as the head­line:

• Pub­lish the cur­rent Block 5(b) PSC and its amend­ments;

• Up­date the Pe­tro­le­um Reg­is­ter;

• Show the ex­ten­sion his­to­ry and the com­mit­ments ex­changed for each ex­ten­sion;

• Tell us whether those com­mit­ments were met;

• Dis­close the con­sid­er­a­tion paid by NGC;

• Ex­plain the treat­ment of his­tor­i­cal costs and cost re­cov­ery;

• Tell us NGC’s ex­pect­ed de­vel­op­ment con­tri­bu­tion and its pro­ject­ed re­turn; and

• And tell us what strat­e­gy is be­ing pur­sued for Do­ra­do and the rest of the cross-bor­der port­fo­lio.

If the an­swers show that T&T used the lever­age cre­at­ed by its sov­er­eign own­er­ship, decades of con­trac­tu­al ap­provals and the need for an ex­ten­sion to se­cure a valu­able 20 per cent po­si­tion for NGC on at­trac­tive terms, there will be some­thing worth cel­e­brat­ing.

But the cel­e­bra­tion should fol­low the ev­i­dence.

Twen­ty per cent is the head­line. The deal is in the de­tails.