PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Two for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ters have ex­pressed con­trast­ing views fol­low­ing re­ports that en­er­gy gi­ant Shell and Venezuela are ne­go­ti­at­ing en­er­gy deals which in­volve use of T&T’s en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture.

Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s MP Stu­art Young raised con­cerns that the gov­ern­ment does not ap­pear in­volved, while Kevin Ram­nar­ine said the sta­bil­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of­fered by T&T could open up the coun­try to more en­er­gy- re­lat­ed in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties giv­en the cur­rent con­flict in the Mid­dle East.

On Wednes­day, in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports stat­ed Shell is in ad­vanced talks with Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op four large ar­eas near T&T, in two of the South ​Amer­i­can coun­try’s largest off­shore nat­ur­al gas fields.

The re­port added Shell could make a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion on the 4.2-tril­lion-cu­bic-feet Drag­on gas field in Venezue­lan wa­ters by the end of this year.

Reuters al­so re­port­ed Shell signed a pre­lim­i­nary deal with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment last month, sig­nalling that af­ter many years of wait­ing for the Drag­on field, it may fi­nal­ly be able make progress with that in­vest­ment.

The re­port added that apart from Drag­on, Shell is seek­ing ac­cess to the three more fields that are part of the 12-tcf Mariscal Su­cre project off Venezuela’s east­ern coast.

The Reuters re­port stat­ed Shell has in­ten­tions of send­ing the Venezue­lan gas to Trinidad for pro­cess­ing in­to liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas for ex­port, which would be a boost for At­lantic LNG, which has been strug­gling in re­cent years due to in­suf­fi­cient gas sup­ply.

Young in re­sponse ar­gued there was no one seek­ing T&T’s in­ter­est at those dis­cus­sions.

He said, “What is most telling about this is that the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and NGC are no where in the mix. They are not at the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble with Venezuela and are leav­ing Shell with a free path­way to se­cure terms that will be less favourable to the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

How­ev­er, Ram­nar­ine said T&T had more lever­age due to re­cent con­flict in the mid­dle.

“The events of the last month in the Mid­dle East and the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture there demon­strate that Trinidad and To­ba­go pos­sess­es the ad­van­tage of se­cu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty when it comes to en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture and mar­itime lo­gis­tics. This fur­ther en­hances the busi­ness case for nat­ur­al gas pro­cess­ing in this coun­try for the com­ing decades,” he ex­plained.

As for Shell’s plan to use T&T’s in­fra­struc­ture for Venezue­lan gas, Ram­nar­ine said, “Shell en­tered the LNG busi­ness in Trinidad in 2013 when it ac­quired Rep­sol’s stake in At­lantic. In 2015 it ac­quired BG Group and fur­ther in­creased its stake in At­lantic. Trinidad is there­fore cen­tral to Shell’s glob­al LNG port­fo­lio but Trinidad’s nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion was not suf­fi­cient to meet the ca­pac­i­ty of the LNG trains.”

Ram­nar­ine point­ed out that LNG Train 1 had been shut­down for sev­er­al years while the oth­er trains were op­er­at­ing be­low ca­pac­i­ty.

As for the po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment of oth­er fields in the Mariscal Su­cre area as sug­gest­ed in the re­port, Ram­nar­ine said, “Nat­ur­al gas fields to the west of Drag­on that could ul­ti­mate­ly be tied in­to Shell’s North Coast Ma­rine Area ( NC­MA) plat­forms which then con­nect to At­lantic. It should how­ev­er be re­mem­bered that while nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela ar­riv­ing at At­lantic and hope­ful­ly at Pt Lisas will ben­e­fit Trinidad and To­ba­go it re­al­ly means we will now be im­port­ing nat­ur­al gas.”

The En­er­gy Cham­ber on its web­site said, “With sub­stan­tial spare ca­pac­i­ty cur­rent­ly avail­able at At­lantic LNG, in­creased LNG pro­duc­tion would boost na­tion­al ex­ports and gen­er­ate much need­ed for­eign ex­change. Fur­ther­more, mov­ing these projects in­to the im­ple­men­ta­tion stage would cre­ate valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ties for the lo­cal sup­ply chain and pro­vide work for lo­cal con­trac­tors.”