Shell said yes­ter­day that re­cent se­nior va­can­cies that have been pub­licly ad­ver­tised are not con­nect­ed to the Man­a­tee project.

This week, Shell ad­ver­tised va­can­cies for chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer, man­ag­er of re­li­a­bil­i­ty en­gi­neer­ing, brown­field man­ag­er and gen­er­al man­ag­er, com­mer­cial T&T in the lo­cal me­dia over the past week.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, the com­pa­ny said, “Shell has been ac­tive in Trinidad and To­ba­go since 1913 and has played a ma­jor role in the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try’s oil and gas in­dus­try. Our foot­print in coun­try is de­ter­mined by a num­ber of dif­fer­ent fac­tors and the re­sourc­ing process fol­lows both the lo­cal and glob­al re­quire­ments of an or­gan­i­sa­tion this size. New roles are be­ing ad­ver­tised in the lo­cal news­pa­pers as part of our com­pli­ance with lo­cal reg­u­la­tions, as out­lined by the work process com­mit­tee and are not di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the Man­a­tee project.”

Shell’s Man­a­tee project is ex­pect­ed to be­gin pro­duc­tion in 2027. The de­vel­op­ment is ex­pect­ed to utilise a large-ca­pac­i­ty pipeline to de­liv­er nat­ur­al gas from the shared mar­itime bound­ary to the Beach­field pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

Shell has been spear­head­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela con­cern­ing ac­cess to nat­ur­al gas from the Drag­on field. The Lo­ran cross-bor­der field is al­so con­trolled by the Lon­don-head­quar­tered, glob­al multi­na­tion­al.

Shell is al­so ex­pect­ed to see pro­duc­tion from Aphrodite in 2027. The field is ex­pect­ed to use a sub­sea tieback in­to the ex­ist­ing Bar­racu­da net­work to feed the At­lantic LNG fa­cil­i­ty and do­mes­tic net­works.

Shell is T&T’s sec­ond-largest pro­duc­er of nat­ur­al gas, with an av­er­age out­put of 505 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day (mm­scf/d) for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to No­vem­ber 2025, ac­cord­ing to the most re­cent con­sol­i­dat­ed month bul­letin. BPTT is the lead­ing pro­duc­er, av­er­ag­ing 1,023 mm­scf/d for the pe­ri­od.

BP and Shell each hold a 45 per cent own­er­ship stake in the At­lantic LNG plant in Point Fortin. State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC) holds the re­main­ing ten per cent.

—Peter Christo­pher