Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the En­er­gy Cham­ber, Thack­wray Dri­ver said he does not ex­pect the first gas to come from the Lo­ran/Man­a­tee field be­fore 2020.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Dri­ver said that the de­ci­sion was good news for the coun­try but that it will take some time for first gas to reach Point Fortin. He ex­plained: "I ex­pect that any de­vel­op­ment will be in the medi­um-term (5 years) as there are still many com­mer­cial agree­ments that will have to be ne­go­ti­at­ed, in­clud­ing gas sales con­tracts and spe­cif­ic field de­vel­op­ment agree­ments. The in­tend­ed pur­chase of BG by Shell means that there will prob­a­bly be a new en­ti­ty en­ter­ing in­to the dis­cus­sions for the first time in 2016. "

Last week, the BG ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that the Venezuela gov­ern­ment has agreed to send some of its por­tion of the nat­ur­al gas in the Lo­ran/Man­a­tee cross-bor­der field to T&T to be processed as Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG).

Mul­ti­ple sources in both Cara­cas and T&T con­firmed that the South Amer­i­can coun­try has de­cid­ed that it made sense to have the gas liq­ue­fied in Point Fortin and last Tues­day a del­e­ga­tion from the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic led by its new Min­is­ter of Oil Eu­lo­gio Del Pino met with Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley and a tech­ni­cal team to pro­vide fur­ther im­pe­tus to the de­vel­op­ment.

Dr Dri­ver said the ad­di­tion­al gas will en­sure that the coun­try has the nat­ur­al gas to ex­tend the life of the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.

"Ob­vi­ous­ly it is ex­cel­lent news for Trinidad & To­ba­go that the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment has in­di­cat­ed its agree­ment that gas could be ex­port­ed from Venezuela to Trinidad. This is a ma­jor shift in their his­tor­i­cal pol­i­cy and of­fers an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty for Trinidad & To­ba­go to ex­tend the life of our petro­chem­i­cal and LNG in­dus­tries."

In the first five months of 2015 nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion av­er­aged 200 mil­lion cu­bic feet a day less than in 2014. For the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to June 2015, nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion stood at 3.8 bil­lion cu­bic feet per day (bcf/d). In the pe­ri­od pe­ri­od last year, it stood at just over 4 bcf/d.

A fur­ther ex­am­i­na­tion of the low­er pro­duc­tion sta­tis­tics in­di­cate that the fall in pro­duc­tion has been main­ly due to low­er out­put from bpTT. In fact, bpTT's pro­duc­tion moved from 2.18 bcf/d in Jan­u­ary 2015 to 1.85 bcf/d by June this yea, a de­cline of 18 per cent. In 2014, bpTT av­er­aged nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion was 2.165 bcf/d.

To put it in per­spec­tive the loss of 200 mil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day is al­most all the gas need­ed to pow­er the en­tire coun­try on a dai­ly ba­sis. It is al­so enough to ser­vice an am­mo­nia or a methanol plant.

The fall in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion has had a rip­ple ef­fect on the sec­tor be­cause a re­duc­tion in the pro­duc­tion does not just mean less mon­ey for the gov­ern­ment at the well­head, it al­so means low­er pro­duc­tion of oth­er gas-based prod­ucts.

For the first five month of 2015, LNG pro­duc­tion was down by 178 mm­cf/d av­er­ag­ing 2 bcf/d down from 2.178 bcf/d in 2014, a de­cline of 9 per cent. This is a ma­jor de­ci­sion that is like­ly to lead to ei­ther the con­struc­tion of a new LNG fa­cil­i­ty in Point Fortin or the redi­rec­tion of gas from LNG to do­mes­tic use. Sources in­di­cate that there is a short­age of be­tween 400 to 600 mil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day and once pro­duc­tion is flow­ing from the Lo­ran/Man­a­tee field that gap will no longer ex­ist.

The Busi­ness Guardian has been in­formed that while no de­ci­sion has been tak­en on this is­sue, the Gov­ern­ment is favour­ing the redi­rec­tion of the nat­ur­al gas rather than the fur­ther ex­pan­sion of At­lantic LNG. This, the BG was told, would en­sure that the high cost of build­ing a new plant and the length of time it will take for the con­struc­tion is re­duced.

Dr Dri­ver said the de­ci­sion on whether there should be a new LNG train built or if the gas should go to the ex­ist­ing train was one for the re­spec­tive Gov­ern­ments, the com­pa­nies - PDVSA, Chevron, BG and Shell (as­sum­ing the pur­chase goes ahead) � and po­ten­tial cus­tomers in T&T. He said: "I think it is too ear­ly to make any firm com­ment at this time."

Ac­cord­ing to the CEO of the LNG Cham­ber, the news al­so means op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal ser­vice com­pa­nies to do more work on both sides of the bor­der.

As he ex­plained: "It is cer­tain­ly pos­i­tive news and does open up the pos­si­bil­i­ties for fur­ther in­vest­ment in the en­er­gy sec­tor, in­clud­ing for en­er­gy ser­vice com­pa­nies and con­trac­tors based in Trinidad & To­ba­go who could pro­vide ser­vices to a new de­vel­op­ment in the Platafor­ma Deltana re­gion."

Ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go have con­tin­ued for the last 12 years start­ing in 2003 with the sign­ing of a mem­o­ran­dum fol­lowed by five years of tech­ni­cal stud­ies of sev­er­al reser­voirs to de­ter­mine if they crossed and to what ex­tent they crossed the bor­der.

A frame­work treaty was then signed and a unit op­er­a­tor se­lect­ed. The op­er­a­tor is now work­ing on a de­vel­op­ment plan and af­ter then ap­provals will have to be sought and the fi­nanc­ing de­ter­mined.