An­drea Perez-Sobers
Se­nior Re­porter
an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy pol­i­cy, geopol­i­tics and in­dus­tri­al up­heaval con­verged in 2025 to re­de­fine T&T’s eco­nom­ic land­scape. The year un­fold­ed as a study in con­trasts: ma­jor up­stream progress at home, a re­newed vote of con­fi­dence from a glob­al oil ma­jor, and, at the same time, the col­lapse of care­ful­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed cross-bor­der gas arrange­ments and the ex­it of a long-stand­ing petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­er. To­geth­er, these de­vel­op­ments un­der­scored both the re­silience and fragili­ty of an econ­o­my still an­chored in nat­ur­al gas.

The most desta­bil­is­ing de­vel­op­ment of the year came with the Unit­ed States’ de­ci­sion to re­voke Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cences that had en­abled T&T to pur­sue gas de­vel­op­ments with­in Venezue­lan wa­ters.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced that Wash­ing­ton had re­voked the li­cences cov­er­ing the Drag­on and Cocuina-Man­akin gas fields on April 8. The Cocuina-Man­akin li­cence was grant­ed on May 31, 2024, and was valid un­til May 31, 2026. The re­vised Drag­on li­cence was is­sued on Oc­to­ber 17, 2023, with an ex­piry date of Oc­to­ber 31, 2025.

Young said the de­ci­sion was un­ex­pect­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the first Pres­i­den­tial Or­der from US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on March 24, which an­nounced tar­iffs on oil-based prod­ucts from Venezuela. In Young’s view, the re­vo­ca­tion ap­peared in­con­sis­tent with the broad­er sig­nals com­ing from Wash­ing­ton at the time.

The im­pli­ca­tions for T&T were im­me­di­ate. Drag­on had been po­si­tioned as a crit­i­cal medi­um-term sup­ply source to ad­dress de­clin­ing do­mes­tic gas pro­duc­tion and sus­tain LNG ex­ports, petro­chem­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing and gov­ern­ment rev­enues. The loss of reg­u­la­to­ry cer­tain­ty ef­fec­tive­ly halt­ed progress on a project that had tak­en years of diplo­mat­ic ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Young said he would seek an au­di­ence with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, who leads US for­eign pol­i­cy with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on Latin Amer­i­ca. He called for as­sur­ances that the US would not seek to harm Trinidad and To­ba­go and that en­gage­ment with Port of Spain would con­tin­ue.

He al­so dis­closed that Ru­bio had pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed how T&T and the wider Caribbean re­gion stood to ben­e­fit from en­er­gy deals ne­go­ti­at­ed with the Bo­li­vian Re­pub­lic, a fac­tor that deep­ened con­cern with­in the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor over the sud­den pol­i­cy re­ver­sal.

In­ter­na­tion­al an­a­lysts de­scribed the move in stark terms. Amer­i­can en­er­gy econ­o­mist Fran­cis­co Monal­di said the re­vo­ca­tion was a “ma­jor blow” to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s gas in­dus­try.

“It is a bad day and bad news for the T&T’s gas in­dus­try. I was sur­prised by the re­vo­ca­tion of the li­cences be­cause I as­sumed that, in the short term, it did not pro­vide any rev­enue to the Venezue­lan regime and the fact that it was a very im­por­tant agree­ment for T&T. Al­so, I as­sumed they would not re­voke the li­cences right now and would wait un­til they ex­pired and would al­so wait with­in the next year to de­cide. This shows that the US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio’s dri­ve to­wards max­i­mum pres­sure left noth­ing stand­ing,” Monal­di told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

Econ­o­mist and for­mer head of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, said the fall­out would ex­tend be­yond en­er­gy.
“This loss is sig­nif­i­cant and will im­pact neg­a­tive­ly on the sta­bil­i­ty and de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try in the medi­um term, as there are lit­tle or no al­ter­na­tives at this stage. It was not avoid­able as the sit­u­a­tion re­quires sat­is­fy­ing con­di­tions in two cap­i­tals si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, which is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult geopo­lit­i­cal­ly. The ex­pe­ri­ence, how­ev­er, would sug­gest that our en­er­gy diplo­ma­cy must be un­re­lent­ing and must ac­cept that small states just have to ex­ploit all the op­tions un­til the day that a door is opened,” Gon­za­les said.

Ten­sions es­ca­lat­ed fur­ther in Oc­to­ber when Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro con­firmed the sus­pen­sion of gas agree­ments with T&T. Maduro said the de­ci­sion stemmed from what he de­scribed as “hos­tile ac­tions” by the Gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.
Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ject­ed the claim and drew a firm line on sov­er­eign­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

“No one, in­clud­ing the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, will pres­sure or black­mail my Gov­ern­ment in­to re­treat­ing from the fight against drug car­tels,” she said.
She al­so moved to counter the nar­ra­tive that her ad­min­is­tra­tion was over­ly re­liant on Drag­on.

“The last Gov­ern­ment mis­tak­en­ly placed all their hopes in the Drag­on project. We have not done so, there­fore, we’re not sus­cep­ti­ble to any black­mail from the Venezue­lans for po­lit­i­cal sup­port.”

Ear­li­er in Oc­to­ber, T&T had been grant­ed an OFAC li­cence to ex­plore the Drag­on gas field in Venezue­lan wa­ters af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar met with Ru­bio, who re­port­ed­ly ad­vised that the project could pro­ceed on­ly if Maduro’s ad­min­is­tra­tion did not ben­e­fit fi­nan­cial­ly.

Maduro’s re­sponse was un­equiv­o­cal.
“On the air­craft car­ri­er of the su­prema­cists of the US em­pire against Venezuela and South Amer­i­ca, I have ap­proved the pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure of the im­me­di­ate sus­pen­sion of all the ef­fects and the agree­ments. That is why I have de­cid­ed to make this de­ci­sion. What the su­prema­cists want is Venezuela’s rich­es,” he said.

Do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion gains and in­dus­tri­al re­treat

While ex­ter­nal diplo­ma­cy fal­tered, 2025 de­liv­ered tan­gi­ble progress in do­mes­tic up­stream ac­tiv­i­ty. In April, bpTT con­firmed that its Cypre de­vel­op­ment had safe­ly de­liv­ered first gas.

On April 3, bpTT said Cypre is one of ten ma­jor projects ex­pect­ed to start up world­wide be­tween 2025 and 2027 as part of bp’s re­set strat­e­gy to grow up­stream pro­duc­tion.

“Pro­duc­tion from Cypre will make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to­wards the 250,000 bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent per day (boed) com­bined peak net pro­duc­tion ex­pect­ed from these ten projects,” bpTT said.

Cypre is bpTT’s third sub­sea de­vel­op­ment and com­pris­es sev­en wells tied back in­to the com­pa­ny’s ex­ist­ing Ju­niper plat­form. The project was wide­ly wel­comed as a rare bright spot in a year oth­er­wise dom­i­nat­ed by sup­ply un­cer­tain­ty, re­in­forc­ing the im­por­tance of max­imis­ing do­mes­tic gas po­ten­tial even as cross-bor­der op­tions stalled.
That op­ti­mism, how­ev­er, was off­set by a ma­jor in­dus­tri­al re­treat. Cana­di­an fer­tilis­er gi­ant Nu­trien Ltd shut down its four am­mo­nia plants and one urea plant in T&T at the end of 2025, de­spite talks with the Gov­ern­ment aimed at re­solv­ing a dis­pute over port fees.

The clo­sure marked one of the most sig­nif­i­cant in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ments of the year, with rip­ple ef­fects across em­ploy­ment, ex­ports and for­eign ex­change earn­ings. Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of En­er­gy’s web­site, Nu­trien’s four am­mo­nia plants have a com­bined name­plate ca­pac­i­ty of 1.79 mil­lion met­ric tonnes per an­num.

Nu­trien T&T’s vice-pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ed­mond Thomp­son con­firmed the ini­tial shut­down on Oc­to­ber 21 in a memo to staff, ex­press­ing re­gret over the out­come of dis­cus­sions with Na­tion­al En­er­gy.
“We had hoped for a more pro­duc­tive out­come; how­ev­er, we have not reached an eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able so­lu­tion that would al­low us to restart op­er­a­tions,” Thomp­son said.
While Na­tion­al En­er­gy agreed to pro­vide port ac­cess through the end of the year, Thomp­son said the un­der­ly­ing is­sues re­mained un­re­solved.
“The mil­lions of dol­lars of retroac­tive and uni­lat­er­al­ly im­posed fees have not been re­scind­ed, and the over­all eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of op­er­a­tions has not been ad­dressed,” he said.

On De­cem­ber 28, re­port­ing by the Saska­toon StarPhoenix placed the Trinidad shut­down in a wider cor­po­rate con­text. The ar­ti­cle said Nu­trien’s ex­it from am­mo­nia and urea pro­duc­tion in Trinidad had be­come a turn­ing point in the com­pa­ny’s broad­er re­treat from ni­tro­gen, as it sold over­seas as­sets and redi­rect­ed cap­i­tal to­wards potash.

It not­ed that in Oc­to­ber, Nu­trien had “com­menced a con­trolled shut­down” of its Trinidad op­er­a­tions, which pro­duced am­mo­nia and urea for ni­tro­gen fer­tilis­er.

Fron­tier ex­plo­ration and a long-term bet

Amid con­trac­tion and diplo­mat­ic strain, 2025 al­so de­liv­ered a sig­nif­i­cant vote of con­fi­dence in T&T’s long-term hy­dro­car­bon po­ten­tial. In Au­gust, US su­per­ma­jor Exxon­Mo­bil re­turned to the coun­try af­ter more than two decades, fol­low­ing the award of a large off­shore ul­tra-deep­wa­ter block.
Exxon­Mo­bilex­it­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2003 af­ter an un­suc­cess­ful ex­plo­ration pro­gramme. Its re­turn marked one of the most con­se­quen­tial up­stream de­vel­op­ments in re­cent years, sig­nalling re­newed in­ter­est in fron­tier ex­plo­ration.
In Au­gust, Exxon­Mo­bil signed a pro­duc­tion shar­ing agree­ment in Port-of-Spain that calls for the com­pa­ny to be­gin col­lect­ing 3D seis­mic da­ta on the li­cence block be­fore drilling two ex­plo­ration wells.
The pro­duc­tion shar­ing agree­ment was ne­go­ti­at­ed in what Exxon­Mo­bil de­scribed as “record time”. Exxon­Mo­bil vice-pres­i­dent of glob­al ex­plo­ration John Ardill said the com­pa­ny in­tend­ed to ap­ply its re­gion­al ex­per­tise.
He told the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny Exxon­Mo­bil want­ed to repli­cate the suc­cess achieved in Guyana, where mul­ti­ple ma­jor off­shore dis­cov­er­ies have trans­formed that coun­try’s eco­nom­ic out­look.

“While this is still fron­tier ex­plo­ration, it [Trinidad] has great po­ten­tial in this ul­tra-deep­wa­ter area,” Ardill said.
Mo­men­tum con­tin­ued in­to De­cem­ber when the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty is­sued a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance to Exxon­Mo­bil to con­duct a 3D seis­mic sur­vey with­in Block TTUD-1. The ap­proval marked the first CEC for hy­dro­car­bon ex­plo­ration in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ul­tra-deep­wa­ter ma­rine area and cov­ers 8,825 square kilo­me­tres off the east coast.

The of­fi­cial han­dover is ex­pect­ed to in­volve Min­is­ter of Plan­ning Kennedy Swarats­ingh, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Exxon­Mo­bil and the EMA.

The project’s foun­da­tion was laid on Au­gust 12, when the Gov­ern­ment signed the mul­ti-mil­lion US dol­lar agree­ment with Exxon­Mo­bil at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre for the pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract for Block Trinidad and To­ba­go Ul­tra Deep 1.