Joel Julien

Trinidad and To­ba­go, the coun­try with the fourth-largest nat­ur­al gas re­serves in the Latin Amer­i­ca re­gion, has failed to take ad­van­tage of Eu­rope's move away from Russ­ian gas, a re­port from in­ter­na­tion­al news or­gan­i­sa­tion Reuters has stat­ed.

The ar­ti­cle ti­tled "In Latam, Pe­ru streaks ahead in LNG race to Eu­rope as Trinidad stum­bles" was writ­ten by Mar­co Aquino and Mara­ian­na Par­ra­ga and pub­lished yes­ter­day.

"As liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) pro­duc­ers try to take ad­van­tage of a glob­al en­er­gy shift trig­gered by Eu­rope's move to be­come in­de­pen­dent from Russ­ian gas, Latin Amer­i­ca's on­ly two LNG ex­porters are mov­ing in op­po­site di­rec­tions," it stat­ed.

"In Pe­ru, LNG ship­ments are ramp­ing up fast with spe­cial em­pha­sis on Eu­rope, where a com­bi­na­tion of firm de­mand and high prices has been lur­ing ex­porters this year. That is de­spite Pe­ru's po­lit­i­cal tur­moil and threats to na­tion­al­ize the gas in­dus­try, which roiled the sec­tor last year," the re­port stat­ed.

In T&T how­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent, it stat­ed.

"But Trinidad and To­ba­go, Latin Amer­i­ca's largest LNG pro­duc­er with enough re­serves and ca­pac­i­ty to meet a por­tion of the in­cre­men­tal de­mand, has been un­able to re­verse an ex­port fall ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue for a third con­sec­u­tive year in 2022 as it strug­gles to bring more gas out­put on­line," it stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port for­mer pres­i­dent of Pe­ru's state-run com­pa­ny and reg­u­la­tor Pe­ru­petro Rafael Zoeger, stat­ed that "Eu­rope be­came an in­tense mar­ket in March and April, con­sum­ing all the fu­el it could get due to abrupt cuts from Rus­sia."

"Every­thing now is get­ting re­jigged in the wake of the war," Zoeger stat­ed.

From the Amer­i­c­as, LNG ship­ments are dom­i­nat­ed by the Unit­ed States, which last year ex­port­ed a record 9.7 bil­lion cu­bic feet per day (cf/d) amid boom­ing de­mand and grow­ing liq­ue­fac­tion ca­pac­i­ty. The Unit­ed States is ex­pect­ed to be­come the world's largest LNG ex­porter this year.

Rus­sia's in­va­sion of Ukraine and re­sult­ing shun­ning of its fu­el in Eu­rope have changed the pre­ferred mar­kets for al­lo­cat­ing LNG car­goes, prompt­ing pro­duc­ers to sign medi­um-to-long-term sup­ply con­tracts with cus­tomers in Eu­rope.

Pe­ru is get­ting ahead of T&T in that race.

Pe­ru­petro re­port­ed a to­tal of 37 LNG car­goes shipped from the Pis­co port from No­vem­ber through May, with al­most half of them de­liv­ered in Eu­rope.

Pe­ru LNG, a con­sor­tium com­prised of Shell (SHEL.), U.S.-based Hunt Oil Corp, Japan's Marubeni Corp (8002.T) and South Ko­rea's SK Group, is in charge of LNG ex­ports from the coun­try.

So far this year, Pe­ru has shipped 26 car­goes car­ry­ing some 1.8 mil­lion tonnes of LNG (4.09 mil­lion cu­bic me­ters), a 74 per cent in­crease ver­sus the same pe­ri­od in 2021, ac­cord­ing to Re­fini­tiv Eikon da­ta. Fif­teen car­goes went to Spain and the Unit­ed King­dom. The re­main­ing ones head­ed to Asia, which last year was the pre­ferred mar­ket for Pe­ru­vian LNG, the Eikon da­ta showed.

Fi­nan­cial ser­vices firm Ebury said in a note this month that Pe­ru­vian LNG ex­ports to the UK, for ex­am­ple, soared to over 1 bil­lion pounds ($1.26 bil­lion) be­tween No­vem­ber 2021 and March 2022. That was up from just 80 mil­lion pounds over a three-year pe­ri­od pri­or to that.

"The out­look is not as bright for Trinidad, the coun­try with the fourth-largest nat­ur­al gas re­serves in Latin Amer­i­ca. Venezuela, Ar­genti­na and Brazil, the na­tions with the biggest gas de­posits in the re­gion, have not built in­fra­struc­ture to ex­port LNG or are not pro­duc­ing enough," the Reuters ar­ti­cle stat­ed.

T&T's gas out­put has dwin­dled in the last decade, ac­cord­ing to BP Sta­tis­ti­cal Re­view of World En­er­gy, amid ob­sta­cles to de­vel­op­ing its ex­pen­sive off­shore re­serves. In con­se­quence, the coun­try's flag­ship At­lantic LNG project has been un­able to ful­ly op­er­ate its four liq­ue­fac­tion trains.

Ac­cord­ing to Reuters En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young did not re­ply to a re­quest for com­ment.

In 2021, the part­ners of the 15 mil­lion-met­ric-tonne fa­cil­i­ty in Point Fortin - BP (BP.L), Shell, Rep­sol (REP.MC), Suez LNG and state-con­trolled NGC Trinidad - shut the first train, fol­lowed by a de­ci­sion to re­struc­ture own­er­ship of the re­main­ing three.

While the gov­ern­ment and pri­vate gas pro­duc­ers in Trinidad de­cide how to ramp up out­put, ex­ports are poised to fall this year from 7.9 mil­lion tonnes shipped in 2021, a lost op­por­tu­ni­ty amid buoy­ant LNG de­mand and high prices in Asia and Eu­rope.

In 2014, Trinidad ex­port­ed over 14 mil­lion tonnes of LNG, ac­cord­ing to Eikon da­ta.