An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says this coun­try stands to be the pri­ma­ry ben­e­fi­cia­ry of BP’s Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, ar­gu­ing that, re­gard­less of up­stream ac­tiv­i­ty, the coun­try re­mains cen­tral to mon­e­tise any near or cross-bor­der gas.

Re­spond­ing to BP and the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment sign­ing an MOU for the ex­plo­ration of nat­ur­al gas in the Lo­ran off­shore area, ear­li­er this week, Mooni­lal said the agree­ment sig­nals mo­men­tum but does not shift the un­der­ly­ing com­mer­cial re­al­i­ty that nat­ur­al gas from Venezue­lan fields must be processed through T&T’s in­fra­struc­ture.

He not­ed this po­si­tion is re­in­forced by on­go­ing work on the cross-bor­der Man­akin-Co­quina field, which he de­scribed as a cor­ner­stone project in the coun­try’s medi­um-term en­er­gy out­look.

“The de­vel­op­ment of the cross-bor­der Man­akin-Co­quina field is a sig­nif­i­cant project in our en­er­gy out­look. This project rep­re­sents the first ma­jor cross-bor­der hy­dro­car­bon de­vel­op­ment that T&T aims to par­take in,” Mooni­lal out­lined.

He said the project is an­chored in co-op­er­a­tion with the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment, with li­cences al­ready se­cured to pro­ceed. The ad­min­is­tra­tion is now fo­cused on ac­cel­er­at­ing time­lines, with con­tin­ued en­gage­ment with bpTT to bring gas to mar­ket as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

Sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment is ex­pect­ed from 2027, with the first gas to fol­low. Once op­er­a­tional, the project is pro­ject­ed to add mean­ing­ful vol­umes to both the do­mes­tic mar­ket and the LNG sec­tor, im­prov­ing util­i­sa­tion rates across ex­ist­ing plants, said Mooni­lal.

He said that in­creased gas sup­ply would al­so di­rect­ly ben­e­fit the petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try, en­abling high­er pro­duc­tion of am­mo­nia and methanol and, by ex­ten­sion, in­creased ex­port rev­enues. He not­ed that bpTT re­mains a long-stand­ing part­ner in the sec­tor, with es­tab­lished ca­pac­i­ty to de­liv­er com­plex up­stream de­vel­op­ments.

Sep­a­rate­ly, Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen con­firmed that dis­cus­sions on cross-bor­der gas projects are al­ready ad­vanc­ing.

Speak­ing to re­porters yes­ter­day at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port of Spain, fol­low­ing the sign­ing of a new nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tract with EOG Re­sources Trinidad Ltd, Ramdeen said bpTT of­fi­cials from Lon­don re­cent­ly held talks at NGC on the Man­akin-Co­quina field.

While de­clin­ing to dis­close de­tails, he said ex­plo­ration work across key fields, in­clud­ing Drag­on and Lo­ran-Man­a­tee, is pro­gress­ing at a pace with the in­volve­ment of NGC, bpTT, and Shell.

Ramdeen al­so ad­dressed con­cerns about in­creased com­pe­ti­tion fol­low­ing the is­suance of a gen­er­al li­cence by the Unit­ed States Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol, which has broad­ened ac­cess to Venezuela’s en­er­gy sec­tor. He said that while more com­pa­nies are en­ter­ing the space, the fun­da­men­tals re­main un­changed.

“None of that gas can be mon­e­tised ex­cept in T&T,” point­ing to the coun­try’s pipeline net­work, LNG fa­cil­i­ties and off­shore in­fra­struc­ture as crit­i­cal as­sets that po­si­tion it as the re­gion’s in­dis­pens­able gas pro­cess­ing hub, Ramdeen added.