Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has re­fused to di­vulge if the re­cent­ly re­scind­ed Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cences were dis­cussed with Unit­ed States (US) rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Mooni­lal led a del­e­ga­tion to Wash­ing­ton DC from May 28-30 for a se­ries of strate­gic meet­ings aimed at deep­en­ing T&T’s en­er­gy ties with the US.

Ad­dress­ing what was achieved yes­ter­day, Dr Mooni­lal said, “We were able to have very fruit­ful meet­ings with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the ma­jor en­er­gy cor­po­ra­tions do­ing busi­ness in T&T and the Caribbean. We were able to meet with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment on mat­ters of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and our com­mon in­ter­ests of the Unit­ed States and T&T in the hemi­sphere.”

De­scrib­ing it as a very in­ten­sive round of meet­ings, Mooni­lal added, “And of course, we met with sev­er­al im­por­tant of­fi­cials re­gard­ing some of our vi­sion­ary and ex­pan­sive pro­jec­tions for the en­er­gy sec­tor in the com­ing years. And mem­bers of the Unit­ed States ad­min­is­tra­tion were very ea­ger and very hap­py to meet with the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the new Gov­ern­ment in T&T.”

He said he is hope­ful this coun­try will en­joy a good re­la­tion­ship with the US.

Asked point­ed­ly if the re­voked OFAC li­cences which would have al­lowed the Drag­on gas deal be­tween T&T and Venezuela to progress dis­cussed with US rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Mooni­lal said, “We did have very con­fi­den­tial dis­cus­sions on en­er­gy pol­i­cy and se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion. Re­gret­tably, I can’t ven­ture be­yond that. But to say that at the end of those dis­cus­sions, it was very clear that we will have an en­hanced col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ship be­tween the Unit­ed States and T&T and oth­er Cari­com play­ers as well.”

How­ev­er, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to Mooni­lal, for­mer En­er­gy min­is­ter and prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young call him out for his guard­ed an­swer about po­ten­tial dis­cus­sions on the OFAC li­cences.

““I re­call Min­is­ter Mooni­lal and the UNC, whilst in op­po­si­tion, say­ing re­peat­ed­ly that en­er­gy dis­cus­sions are not con­fi­den­tial and there should be full dis­clo­sure. He re­peat­ed­ly at­tacked the Drag­on gas ini­tia­tive and even called for sanc­tions to be placed on me by the US.

“In fact, it is Mooni­lal who was ask­ing ques­tions about my trips to Venezuela, where the world knew I was work­ing on se­cur­ing li­cences for Drag­on and Cocuina-Man­akin for T&T.

“It is now Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar who called Pres­i­dent Maduro a nar­co traf­fick­er and at­tacked Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez re­peat­ed­ly. Wasn’t one of her first state­ments as Prime Min­is­ter that Drag­on is dead? Mooni­lal must tell the pop­u­la­tion whom he meet with in Wash­ing­ton and what was dis­cussed. Sure­ly, he is not pur­su­ing Drag­on,” Young told Guardian Me­dia.

In April, the US gov­ern­ment re­voked the li­cences that had pre­vi­ous­ly al­lowed com­pa­nies like Shell and BP to en­gage in gas de­vel­op­ment projects in Venezue­lan wa­ters, in­clud­ing the Drag­on field.

The Drag­on gas field is lo­cat­ed off­shore Venezuela near the mar­itime bor­der with T&T and holds an es­ti­mat­ed four tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas. The plan in­volved trans­port­ing gas via a 17 km pipeline to Trinidad’s Hi­bis­cus plat­form, aim­ing to bol­ster the coun­try’s liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas ex­ports.

Min­utes af­ter be­ing sworn in as Prime Min­is­ter on May 1, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared that as far as her ad­min­is­tra­tion was con­cerned, the deal was dead.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Mooni­lal said there is “good news and bless­ings” to look for­ward to, as he re­vealed that Shell T&T Ltd’s lat­est an­nounce­ment could lead to 107 mil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day in the near fu­ture.

“We are hap­py that on our re­turn, in­deed, Shell has tak­en a very im­por­tant de­ci­sion, fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion on a crit­i­cal is­sue.

“We have al­so not­ed the gas find by British Pe­tro­le­um and EOG, the Men­to gas find. And it all au­gurs for a very pos­i­tive fu­ture for the en­er­gy sec­tor in T&T, when we tie that in­to our ex­pan­sive and vi­sion­ary pol­i­cy of the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, to work close­ly with Guyana, Suri­name and in­deed Grena­da on projects of mu­tu­al in­ter­est to ben­e­fit the peo­ple of those coun­tries.”

On Tues­day, Shell T&T Ltd an­nounced the ap­proval of the Fi­nal In­vest­ment De­ci­sion for the Aphrodite gas field project in the East Coast Ma­rine Area, one of the coun­try’s most sig­nif­i­cant gas-pro­duc­ing re­gions. Ex­pect­ed to start pro­duc­tion in 2027 with a peak out­put of 18,400 bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent per day, the project aims to strength­en the lo­cal petro­chem­i­cal, pow­er gen­er­a­tion, and do­mes­tic gas mar­kets.

Mooni­lal said he is hop­ing the new nat­ur­al gas de­vel­op­ment project will help counter the sus­tained de­cline in pro­duc­tion from the ma­tur­ing reser­voirs in the Shell-op­er­at­ed east coast ma­rine area.

This comes af­ter bpTT’s May 29 an­nounce­ment that the Men­to gas de­vel­op­ment has suc­cess­ful­ly de­liv­ered first gas.

Men­to is part of bp’s glob­al strat­e­gy to grow its up­stream port­fo­lio and is one of 10 ma­jor projects ex­pect­ed to con­tribute to a com­bined peak net pro­duc­tion of 250,000 bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent per day by 2027.