GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says T&T is on the verge of sign­ing a key agree­ment with Venezuela that can pave the way to boost nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and fur­ther re­vive this coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Mooni­lal said the Min­istry of En­er­gy is ad­vanc­ing the Ex­tra-Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Mea­sure­ment Agree­ment.

“The min­istry is pro­gress­ing the Ex­tra-Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Mea­sure­ment Agree­ment. May I add, we are pur­su­ing that agree­ment with a com­plete and per­fect Eng­lish trans­la­tion re­quired for the mea­sure­ment of the gas. And we ex­pect to en­gage with the Re­pub­lic of Venezuela very soon, Mr Speak­er,” Mooni­lal told the House.

He added that dis­cus­sions with Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties were at an ad­vanced stage and ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the agree­ment could be fi­nalised short­ly.

“With the work of the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, we ex­pect to en­gage with the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties very short­ly to sign off on this ma­jor agree­ment,” Mooni­lal added.

The min­is­ter de­scribed the ne­go­ti­a­tions as a clear in­di­ca­tion of Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to deep­en en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion with Venezuela de­spite on­go­ing geopo­lit­i­cal and mar­ket un­cer­tain­ties.

“That ne­go­ti­a­tion agree­ment sig­nals a clear in­ten­tion on the part of this Gov­ern­ment to en­gage with Venezuela,” he said.

He said mo­men­tum in T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor con­tin­ued through­out Oc­to­ber 2026 with the suc­cess­ful load­out of the Co­conut Jack­et, mark­ing an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for the lo­cal off­shore en­er­gy in­dus­try.

He not­ed that the project rep­re­sents the sec­ond ma­jor off­shore jack­et to be dis­patched from a lo­cal fab­ri­ca­tion fa­cil­i­ty, un­der­scor­ing the ca­pa­bil­i­ties that ex­ist with­in the coun­try to sup­port large-scale en­er­gy de­vel­op­ments.

Mooni­lal said the Co­conut Project, be­ing de­vel­oped through a joint ven­ture be­tween EOG Re­sources and bpTT, high­lights the strength and com­pet­i­tive­ness of T&T’s lo­cal en­er­gy ser­vices sec­tor.

He de­scribed the achieve­ment as fur­ther ev­i­dence that lo­cal com­pa­nies and work­ers pos­sess the ex­per­tise re­quired to ex­e­cute com­plex off­shore projects, while sup­port­ing con­tin­ued in­vest­ment and ac­tiv­i­ty across down­stream sec­tors.

“These two projects demon­strate the sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment and project ex­e­cu­tion tak­ing place. In Oc­to­ber 2026, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor record­ed yet an­oth­er mile­stone as BP an­nounced that its Ju­niper fa­cil­i­ty achieved a record dai­ly pro­duc­tion rate of 700 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day. This rep­re­sents the high­est dai­ly pro­duc­tion rate achieved by Ju­niper since it com­menced op­er­a­tion in 2017,” the min­is­ter said, adding that this is a sig­nif­i­cant ac­com­plish­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the ma­ture gas province.

He fur­ther not­ed that re­cent de­vel­op­ments in the en­er­gy sec­tor are not con­fined to off­shore op­er­a­tions, stat­ing that Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration con­tin­ues to ad­vance its de­vel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion ac­tiv­i­ties across the West­ern Dis­trict 4, Ot­tawa and Cen­tral blocks.