Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go is po­si­tion­ing it­self to tap in­to more than 12 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas from sev­er­al cross-bor­der and re­gion­al fields fol­low­ing the sign­ing of new hy­dro­car­bon ex­plo­ration li­cences in Venezuela.

The de­vel­op­ment in­cludes li­cences for Venezuela’s Lo­ran Phase 2 de­vel­op­ment and the Platafor­ma Deltana area, with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scrib­ing the agree­ments as a boost to T&T’s en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and its po­si­tion as a re­gion­al en­er­gy hub and thank­ing act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez and her gov­ern­ment for sign­ing off on the agree­ments.

In a state­ment is­sued by the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the agree­ments place T&T in a strate­gic po­si­tion to mon­e­tise the gas us­ing the coun­try’s ex­ist­ing en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed bpTT, which has been grant­ed a joint in­ter­est and op­er­a­tor­ship of the as­sets, and wel­comed XRG, the in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy in­vest­ment com­pa­ny of Abu Dhabi Na­tion­al Oil Com­pa­ny (AD­NOC), in­to the re­gion.

XRG will hold a joint in­ter­est in the li­cence with UCC Oil and Gas.

The Lo­ran field forms part of the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee cross-bor­der gas field, which is es­ti­mat­ed to con­tain ten tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas.

On the Trinidad and To­ba­go side, Man­a­tee is be­ing de­vel­oped by Shell, with first gas ex­pect­ed in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2027.

The lat­est Venezue­lan li­cences add to a se­ries of de­vel­op­ments that could strength­en T&T’s ac­cess to re­gion­al gas sup­plies as do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion con­tin­ues to face chal­lenges.

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC) re­cent­ly signed an agree­ment with bpTT for the joint ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment of the Man­akin-Cocuina field.

The Gov­ern­ment said the new Venezue­lan li­cences there­fore pro­vide an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to deep­en its re­la­tion­ship with bpTT.

It al­so re­vealed that it has been hold­ing dis­cus­sions with XRG with the aim of en­cour­ag­ing the com­pa­ny’s en­try in­to T&T and the wider Latin Amer­i­can re­gion.

The Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment comes as T&T seeks to max­imise the use of its es­tab­lished en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing its LNG, petro­chem­i­cal and down­stream fa­cil­i­ties, as new re­gion­al gas op­por­tu­ni­ties emerge.

The Lo­ran-Man­a­tee de­vel­op­ment is par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant be­cause the field strad­dles the mar­itime bound­ary be­tween Venezuela and T&T, mak­ing co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two coun­tries crit­i­cal to its even­tu­al de­vel­op­ment.

The Gov­ern­ment has pre­vi­ous­ly po­si­tioned cross-bor­der gas de­vel­op­ments as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­tend the life of T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor by bring­ing ad­di­tion­al sup­plies in­to the coun­try’s pro­cess­ing and down­stream net­work.

The lat­est agree­ments al­so bring ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy play­ers in­to clos­er align­ment with T&T’s re­gion­al gas am­bi­tions, the re­lease said.

The Gov­ern­ment said XRG’s planned in­volve­ment could cre­ate fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­vest­ment as the com­pa­ny seeks to ex­pand its glob­al gas port­fo­lio in the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion has made at­tract­ing in­vest­ment and se­cur­ing ad­di­tion­al gas sup­plies cen­tral to its strat­e­gy for the en­er­gy sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly as T&T seeks to main­tain pro­duc­tion at its ex­ist­ing down­stream fa­cil­i­ties and de­vel­op new op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment would con­tin­ue to pur­sue op­por­tu­ni­ties that strength­en T&T’s po­si­tion in the re­gion­al en­er­gy mar­ket.

The li­cence agree­ments, she said, rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T to ben­e­fit from gas re­sources in neigh­bour­ing Venezuela while lever­ag­ing in­fra­struc­ture al­ready es­tab­lished here.

From diplo­mat­ic dis­tance

to en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion

Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Ro­driguez have had a strained re­la­tion­ship, with Per­sad-Bisses­sar open­ly crit­i­cal of Ro­dríguez and Venezuela’s pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for sev­er­al years.

Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had called for sanc­tions to be im­posed on T&T in re­la­tion to Ro­dríguez’s vis­it to the coun­try.

The diplo­mat­ic tone has since changed fol­low­ing the change in Venezuela’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship and Ro­dríguez’s emer­gence as in­ter­im pres­i­dent.

Last month, Ro­dríguez pub­licly thanked Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er Cari­com lead­ers af­ter T&T joined a re­gion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an ef­fort to send as­sis­tance to Venezuela fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing June 24 earth­quakes.

“I thank you for this sup­port you are pro­vid­ing to our coun­try,” Ro­dríguez said while in­spect­ing re­lief sup­plies sent by Cari­com.

She specif­i­cal­ly named T&T among the coun­tries whose lead­ers had sup­port­ed Venezuela, de­scrib­ing the as­sis­tance as ev­i­dence of the “friend­ship, co­op­er­a­tion and sol­i­dar­i­ty” be­tween Caribbean na­tions.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to the news yes­ter­day, for­mer prime min­is­ter and for­mer En­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s role in the de­vel­op­ment, say­ing it was “nowhere near to or present at these agree­ment ne­go­ti­a­tions and sign­ings in Venezuela.”

Young said the Gov­ern­ment’s ab­sence from ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela over Lo­ran and oth­er Venezue­lan gas fields places T&T at a “se­ri­ous dis­ad­van­tage.”

He al­so ques­tioned the sig­nif­i­cance of the lat­est agree­ments, point­ing out that with Shell in­volved in Phase One and BP, XRG and UCC Hold­ings in­volved in Phase Two, the com­pa­nies and Venezuela will still have to ne­go­ti­ate how the field will be de­vel­oped, in­clud­ing the com­mer­cial terms.