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Monday, May 19, 2025

BP opens talks with Venezuela, T&T on Cocuina/Manakin field

by

429 days ago
20240316
Minister of Energy and Energy Industries, Stuart Young, Venezuela’s Minister of Oil, Pedro Rafael Tellechea and bpTT president David Campbell at the meeting in Caracas, Venezuela on Thursday.

Minister of Energy and Energy Industries, Stuart Young, Venezuela’s Minister of Oil, Pedro Rafael Tellechea and bpTT president David Campbell at the meeting in Caracas, Venezuela on Thursday.

Courtesy Telesur

En­er­gy gi­ant BP Plc an­nounced yes­ter­day that it is en­gaged in pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing the de­vel­op­ment of a gas field that ex­tends from Trinidad and To­ba­go to Venezuela.

This con­fir­ma­tion fol­lows a meet­ing be­tween the Venezue­lan Oil Min­is­ter and BP to ex­plore the po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment of the Man­akin and Cocuina fields as a uni­fied project in Cara­cas on Thurs­day.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young was al­so in Venezuela for the meet­ing and spoke on the project in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

“Yes­ter­day and the day be­fore I was in Venezuela along with BP con­duct­ing con­tin­ued con­ver­sa­tions, ne­go­ti­a­tions on be­half of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go for a project now with BP and Venezuela called Cocuina/Man­akin. That is the news that is top of the news in the glob­al en­er­gy re­ports of to­day,” Young said.

BP cur­rent­ly op­er­ates the Man­akin field, which is sit­u­at­ed in T&T wa­ters. The Lon­don-based oil com­pa­ny is eval­u­at­ing busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties in Venezuela amidst the Unit­ed States’ re­newed threats of sanc­tions on the Venezue­lan oil in­dus­try.

De­spite this, ma­jor oil com­pa­nies are op­ti­mistic that the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion will not im­pose stricter sanc­tions on Venezuela’s en­er­gy sec­tor be­fore the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, even as Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro re­treats from de­mo­c­ra­t­ic con­ces­sions.

Venezuela is re­port­ed to be will­ing to grant BP and CNP joint or sep­a­rate li­cens­es for ex­plo­ration, de­vel­op­ment, and ex­port.

Tech­ni­cal as­pects of the Man­akin and Cocuina fields were re­viewed dur­ing a meet­ing held by del­e­ga­tions on Thurs­day.

BP, which was once a promi­nent play­er in Venezuela, had di­vest­ed its three oil fields and one up­grad­er to a Ros­neft sub­sidiary in 2010.

A state­ment is­sued by the En­er­gy Min­istry said that oth­er of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Pene­lope Brad­shaw-Niles and ex­ec­u­tives of Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) al­so at­tend­ed the meet­ing.

Pres­i­dent of bpTT, David Camp­bell was al­so there.

Pop­u­lar Pow­er for Pe­tro­le­um Min­is­ter Rafael Tel­lechea and his vice-min­is­ter Juan San­tana rep­re­sent­ed the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment.

The state­ment added, “The pre­sen­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions, in­clud­ing the ex­change of tech­ni­cal in­for­ma­tion and ne­go­ti­a­tion of le­gal terms and con­di­tions, ad­vance the in­tend­ed project of de­vel­op­ing this hy­dro­car­bon field. We con­tin­ue to work as­sid­u­ous­ly to en­sure the fu­ture of T&T.”

In De­cem­ber, Shell an­nounced plans to ex­port gas from the Venezue­lan-Trinida­di­an off­shore gas field known as Drag­on.

Most of those re­serves are in Venezue­lan wa­ters.


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