PM announces energy mission to Venezuela

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says a diplo­mat­ic del­e­ga­tion will soon trav­el to Venezuela to en­sure Trinidad and To­ba­go se­cures its “just share” of cross-bor­der oil and gas re­sources, sig­nalling a re­newed push to ad­vance long-stalled en­er­gy projects.

Speak­ing at a $69 mil­lion fire ten­der han­dover cer­e­mo­ny in Pe­nal yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the ini­tia­tive forms part of a broad­er strat­e­gy to strength­en the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty along­side im­prove­ments in na­tion­al safe­ty in­fra­struc­ture.

“Short­ly, a diplo­mat­ic del­e­ga­tion will de­part Trinidad and To­ba­go to go to Venezuela to en­sure we get our just share of the oil and gas, which we part­ly own through the NGC,” she said.

She did not elab­o­rate fur­ther and de­clined to take ques­tions from the me­dia.

Her com­ments come amid long­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the two coun­tries over joint en­er­gy re­serves, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Drag­on gas field and the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee field.

The Drag­on gas field, lo­cat­ed in Venezue­lan wa­ters but in close prox­im­i­ty to T&T’s en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, has been iden­ti­fied as a crit­i­cal sup­ply source for the coun­try’s liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) in­dus­try. How­ev­er, de­vel­op­ment has been re­peat­ed­ly de­layed due to geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions and sanc­tions im­posed on Venezuela by the Unit­ed States.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee field, which strad­dles the mar­itime bound­ary be­tween the two coun­tries, has long been the sub­ject of com­plex bi­lat­er­al arrange­ments. While T&T has pro­ceed­ed with de­vel­op­ment of the Man­a­tee por­tion, ne­go­ti­a­tions have con­tin­ued over how best to treat the Venezue­lan Lo­ran re­serves.

Re­la­tions be­tween Port-of-Spain and Cara­cas have fluc­tu­at­ed over the years, with dis­putes over ac­cess, rev­enue-shar­ing and op­er­a­tional con­trol. These ten­sions in­ten­si­fied un­der the ad­min­is­tra­tion of now de­posed Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the Unit­ed States had im­posed sanc­tions tar­get­ing his gov­ern­ment, com­pli­cat­ing cross-bor­der en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion. Many of those sanc­tions have since been lift­ed by the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion af­ter Del­cy Ro­driguez was in­stalled as the in­ter­im Venezue­lan leader.

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in mak­ing the an­nounce­ment, said her Gov­ern­ment is work­ing with the US gov­ern­ment and oth­er gov­ern­ments to en­sure that Trinidad and To­ba­go ben­e­fits fair­ly from shared re­sources.

“We are look­ing not on­ly at safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in the phys­i­cal sense, but al­so eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty for our peo­ple,” she said.

When asked whether she would per­son­al­ly ac­com­pa­ny the del­e­ga­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the de­tails re­main “a work in progress.”

En­er­gy ex­pert and for­mer min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan yes­ter­day wel­comed the move, not­ing that there has been con­sid­er­able an­tic­i­pa­tion sur­round­ing the out­come of on­go­ing dis­cus­sions in­volv­ing cross-bor­der gas de­vel­op­ment.

She point­ed to the im­por­tance of ex­pand­ing ex­ist­ing Unit­ed States Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cences—cur­rent­ly is­sued to ma­jor en­er­gy com­pa­nies such as Shell and BP—to a coun­try-spe­cif­ic frame­work that would in­clude T&T’s state en­ti­ties like the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

Ac­cord­ing to Seep­er­sad-Bachan, such an ap­proach would pro­vide greater le­gal cer­tain­ty and al­low NGC to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly in ne­go­ti­a­tions with­out risk­ing breach­es of US sanc­tions. She said a 2010 uni­ti­sa­tion agree­ment had ini­tial­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed joint de­vel­op­ment of the cross-bor­der reser­voir by Chevron on the Venezue­lan Lo­ran side and Shell on the Trinidad-based Man­a­tee side. How­ev­er, sanc­tions lat­er ren­dered that arrange­ment im­prac­ti­cal, lead­ing to the de-uni­ti­sa­tion of the field.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said T&T has since ad­vanced plans to in­de­pen­dent­ly de­vel­op the Man­a­tee re­serves—es­ti­mat­ed at 2.7 tril­lion cu­bic feet of gas—with first pro­duc­tion ex­pect­ed around 2027.

She ex­plained that, from a pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer­ing stand­point, uni­ti­sa­tion is gen­er­al­ly pre­ferred, as it max­imis­es re­cov­ery, pre­vents com­pet­i­tive drilling and re­duces du­pli­ca­tion of in­fra­struc­ture.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal and NGC chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen for com­ment, but was un­suc­cess­ful, as calls went unan­swered.