De­spite Venezuela’s sus­pen­sion of all gas deals with T&T, multi­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­ny Shell says it re­mains com­mit­ted to de­vel­op­ing the Man­a­tee gas field, sig­nalling that the diplo­mat­ic rift be­tween Cara­cas and Port-of-Spain has not yet de­railed cross-bor­der en­er­gy am­bi­tions.

“Shell is close­ly fol­low­ing cur­rent de­vel­op­ments be­tween the gov­ern­ments of T&T and Venezuela. We re­main com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of the Man­a­tee project and con­tin­ue to work close­ly with all rel­e­vant par­ties to progress it,” a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the com­pa­ny said in an email ex­change with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day.

Asked how much Shell had in­vest­ed in ex­plor­ing the Drag­on Gas field, the com­pa­ny re­spond­ed, “That’s not in­for­ma­tion that we dis­close.”

T&T holds ap­prox­i­mate­ly 27 per cent of the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee field, while Venezuela owns the re­main­ing 73 per cent. The Man­a­tee por­tion of the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee field, lo­cat­ed on the T&T side, con­tains an es­ti­mat­ed 2.712 tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf) of nat­ur­al gas, while the to­tal com­bined Lo­ran/Man­a­tee field has about 10.04 to 10.25 tcf. The field is ex­pect­ed to pro­duce over 600 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day at its peak.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young said in a Face­book post on Wednes­day that de­spite T&T’s stake in the shared re­source and a uni­ti­sa­tion agree­ment al­low­ing for joint de­vel­op­ment, pro­duc­tion can­not pro­ceed with­out Venezuela’s con­sent.

“See­ing the prob­lem of our de­clin­ing gas re­serves in 2019 we (the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment) ne­go­ti­at­ed with the Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela and got them to agree that we could be­gin pro­duc­ing the gas in the Man­a­tee share of the field. This was done pur­suant to an agree­ment that both coun­tries had pre­vi­ous­ly en­tered in­to that al­lowed for joint ex­plo­ration of nat­ur­al gas fields. So, whilst the 2019 agree­ment al­lows us to pro­duce Man­a­tee in a de­u­ni­tised man­ner, it still re­quires Venezuela’s con­sent and re­lies on an agree­ment that was en­tered in­to with Venezuela.”

Last Mon­day, Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent, Nico­las Maduro, or­dered the sus­pen­sion of an en­er­gy frame­work agree­ment signed by the two coun­tries in 2015. The sus­pen­sion of the agree­ment stopped all the nat­ur­al gas agree­ments be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

The lat­est sus­pen­sion has stirred con­cern about the fu­ture of T&T’s gas sup­ply, which un­der­pins op­er­a­tions of petro­chem­i­cal op­er­a­tions on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and the liq­ue­fac­tion com­plex in Point Fortin, both of which con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to state rev­enue.

Speak­ing out­side Par­lia­ment on Tues­day, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ad­dress the na­tion di­rect­ly, warn­ing that the sus­pen­sion rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions about T&T’s en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

“The man­age­ment of our en­er­gy sec­tor re­quires diplo­ma­cy and com­pe­tence,” he said, urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to clar­i­fy whether the cross-bor­der fields, in­clud­ing Lo­ran/Man­a­tee, Cocuina/Man­akin and the near-bor­der Drag­on field, are now “in prej­u­dice” fol­low­ing Cara­cas’ de­ci­sion.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal did not re­spond to ques­tions about the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee agree­ment, but ac­knowl­edged re­ports of Venezuela’s with­draw­al from all gas arrange­ments with Port-of-Spain.

He sought to re­as­sure cit­i­zens that the T&T econ­o­my was not de­pen­dent sole­ly on Venezue­lan gas.

“T&T con­tin­ues to be a proven hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­er, with sig­nif­i­cant re­serves for the fu­ture,” Mooni­lal said.

Mooni­lal added that the Min­istry of En­er­gy is pur­su­ing mea­sures to boost pro­duc­tion.

“In this re­gard, we have en­gaged with and re­ceived as­sur­ances from the ma­jor oil and gas com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in T&T to ad­vance their ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment ac­tiv­i­ties and to max­imise pro­duc­tion in the short­est pos­si­ble time­frame.”

“The in­dus­try is cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an up­surge in ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ty both on­shore and off­shore. In the deep­wa­ter, ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ty is be­ing un­der­tak­en by the con­sor­tium of bpTT and Shell in deep-wa­ter blocks 25(a), 25(b) and 27, and by Exxon­Mo­bil in Block TTUD 1.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, bids re­ceived in the 2025 Deep­wa­ter Com­pet­i­tive Bid Round are cur­rent­ly be­ing eval­u­at­ed. We ex­pect that deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion will be piv­otal in re­sus­ci­tat­ing our en­er­gy sec­tor through do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion with sup­port from our on­shore and shal­low-wa­ter provinces.”

Mooni­lal al­so high­light­ed on­go­ing re­gion­al part­ner­ships.

“The gov­ern­ment has sought and en­tered in­to agree­ments for en­er­gy co-op­er­a­tion with Caribbean neigh­bours such as Grena­da, Suri­name and Guyana.”

How­ev­er, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Con­rad Enill warned that the lat­est de­vel­op­ments could trig­ger a shift in en­er­gy com­pa­nies’ in­vest­ment strat­e­gy.

“When you have a sit­u­a­tion where the gas that was go­ing to be avail­able is now, at best, du­bi­ous, then you have a sit­u­a­tion where the com­pa­nies that are cur­rent­ly hold­ing strain will start to look at how long this is go­ing to take, what op­tions there are, if any. And in many in­stances, be­cause there are oth­er places that can pro­vide them with gas, they would sim­ply make eco­nom­ic de­ci­sions on the ba­sis of dol­lar, of cap­i­tal spent for best re­turn.”

Enill cau­tioned that es­ca­lat­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sion could wors­en T&T’s $3.8 bil­lion deficit in the $59 bil­lion bud­get and weak­en in­vestor con­fi­dence.

“It is in that con­text that the rev­enues that have been pro­ject­ed can be in­ter­fered with, not on­ly on a price ba­sis, but now on a vol­ume ba­sis,” he said.

“They might be able to make the prof­its this year be­cause they would have in­ven­to­ry, they would have stock, they would have done a lot of stuff. But what hap­pens next year, the year af­ter, I think it’s where we’re go­ing to have to se­ri­ous­ly fo­cus our at­ten­tion.”

He added that job loss­es were al­so like­ly.

“Job loss­es will be like­ly, but the re­al­i­ty is that those who are af­fect­ed be­cause it’s in the en­er­gy sec­tor, they would be com­pen­sat­ed prop­er­ly so that they would have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sur­vive for a pe­ri­od of time. But some of the ser­vices that these com­pa­nies pro­cure—food, the satel­lite busi­ness­es, the trans­porta­tion, the se­cu­ri­ty, the this, that and the oth­er —those are go­ing to be af­fect­ed.”