Aleem Khan

An ex­cess sup­ply of liqui­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) from T&T is be­ing ten­dered on in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets as "spot car­go," ICIS said in its Au­gust 26 LNG mar­ket re­port.ICIS is an over 30-year-old Lon­don-based petro­chem­i­cal mar­ket in­for­ma­tion provider of pric­ing da­ta, news and analy­sis. The LNG is be­ing ten­dered on the spot mar­ket, mean­ing it is not part of any sup­ply con­tract com­mit­ment by any of the T&T's At­lantic part­ners - BP, BG, Shell, NGC and oth­ers.

Over the past two years, be­fore news about their sale could hit the mar­ket, T&T's spot car­goes would most of­ten be snapped up by South Amer­i­can neigh­bours, in­clud­ing Ar­genti­na, Brazil and Chile, ac­cord­ing to da­ta com­piled by the Guardian.

Just this week, both Ar­genti­na and Brazil re­ceived spot car­goes from Point Fortin, ac­cord­ing to Ma­rine Traf­fic Ves­sel Find­er. Ves­sel Po­lar Spir­it of­floaded at Es­co­bar port near Buenos Aires, Ar­genti­na, af­ter de­part­ing T&T on Au­gust 4. Mean­while, Ves­sel Va­len­cia Knut­sen of­floaded its LNG car­go at Bahia ter­mi­nal, Brazil af­ter de­part­ing T&T on Au­gust 19.

"In the At­lantic basin, ex­cess sup­ply is be­ing ten­dered from T&T and op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­load busi­ness from the US Gulf, Spain and north­west Eu­rope are ris­ing in line with more at­trac­tive de­liv­ered ex-ship (DES) prices in po­ten­tial end mar­kets," au­thor Lu­dovic Alder­s­ley said in the ICIS Mar­ket Re­port. DES is a trade term re­quir­ing the sell­er to de­liv­er goods to a buy­er at an agreed port of ar­rival. The sell­er re­mains re­spon­si­ble for the goods un­til they are de­liv­ered.

Un­der the sub-head­ing "Trinidad, US Gulf to of­fer sur­plus," the ICIS said in its re­port that "a spot car­go for Sep­tem­ber load­ing has been of­fered from the 14.8 mil­lion tonnes per an­num (mt­pa) At­lantic LNG ex­port com­plex in T&T. The Sep­tem­ber 23 car­go is be­ing of­fered on a free on board (FOB) ba­sis from Trin­ling, one of the con­sor­tia that mar­kets vol­umes from At­lantic LNG Trains 2 and 3."FOB is a ship­ping term that means the sup­pli­er (Trin­ling) will pay the ship­ping costs.

Trin­ling is a com­pa­ny on pa­per for trade. LNG is sold to Point Fortin LNG Ex­ports Ltd (PFLE) and Trin­ling Ltd (both in­cor­po­rat­ed in T&T) from At­lantic for on­ward sale. PFLE and Trin­ling are owned in pro­por­tion­al eq­ui­ty by the North Coast Ma­rine Area (NC­MA) and East Coast Ma­rine Area (EC­MA) part­ners, re­spec­tive­ly.

NC­MA part­ners are the UK's BG Group (45.88 per cent), Italy's Eni (17.31 per cent), T&T's Petrotrin (19.5 per cent), and NS­GP (En­sign) Ltd (17.31 per cent), a pri­vate­ly-held com­pa­ny in Port-of-Spain whose ad­dress is in care of at­tor­neys Fitzwilliam Stone Fur­ness Smith & Mor­gan.EC­MA part­ners are the BG Group (50 per cent) and Chevron (per cent).

"Mar­ket sources in the At­lantic Basin said of­fers for the Trinidad car­go for a late Sep­tem­ber pe­ri­od could rise to the high US$11.00 per mil­lion British ther­mal units (MMB­tu), but so far, dis­cus­sions for Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber de­liv­er­ies have been no­tion­al," ICIS said. Nat­ur­al gas on the New York Mer­can­tile Ex­change trad­ed up to press time for US$3.93 per MMB­tu.

"The four-train At­lantic LNG ex­port plant has typ­i­cal­ly pro­duced on­ly an­nu­al con­tract vol­umes through­out the year, main­ly due to prob­lems with sourc­ing feed gas. How­ev­er, with the con­tract year soon to be con­clud­ed in Oc­to­ber, ad­di­tion­al spot car­goes could be­come avail­able from Trinidad, which would boost spot flex­i­bil­i­ty for the fourth quar­ter," ICIS said.

The in­for­ma­tion provider said some may want to buy the T&T LNG to store it. ICIS told traders "stor­age plays could al­so be utilised in the At­lantic" and cit­ed "the two car­goes held by US-based Cono­coPhillips in its Freeport LNG fa­cil­i­ty, which were im­port­ed ear­li­er this year."ICIS quot­ed a trad­er as say­ing "of­fers for a Sep­tem­ber FOB load­ing could go in­to the US$12.00/MMB­tu range, but would be de­pen­dent on de­mand in Asia and South Amer­i­ca."

About EC­MA

Ac­cord­ing to the BG Group 2013 da­ta book, the BG Group-op­er­at­ed EC­MA de­vel­op­ment com­pris­es the Dol­phin gas field, lo­cat­ed 83 kilo­me­tres off the east coast of Trinidad in Block 6(b), which com­menced pro­duc­tion in 1996, and the Dol­phin Deep gas field in the ad­ja­cent Block 5(a), which start­ed up in 2006.

Both Dol­phin and Dol­phin Deep are con­tract­ed to sup­ply do­mes­tic gas to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and LNG ex­ports to BG Gas Mar­ket­ing (BG­GM), a whol­ly owned BG Group sub­sidiary which is op­er­at­ed by GEMS, via At­lantic LNG Train 3 and At­lantic LNG Train 4.

The gas is pro­duced un­der a "com­bined de­vel­op­ment plan" for the fields in Blocks 5(a), 6(b) and E. Pro­duc­tion is cur­rent­ly de­liv­ered from the Dol­phin field through 13 plat­form wells, and the Dol­phin Deep field from two sub-sea wells. These wells were the first sub-sea com­ple­tions in T&T, ac­cord­ing to the da­ta book. The Dol­phin Deep sub-sea fa­cil­i­ties are tied back to fa­cil­i­ties on the Dol­phin plat­form.

About NC­MA

The BG Group-op­er­at­ed NC­MA de­vel­op­ment, lo­cat­ed 40 kilo­me­tres off the north coast of Trinidad, in­cludes the Hi­bis­cus, Poin­set­tia and Cha­co­nia gas fields. There is a Uni­ti­sa­tion Agree­ment with Petrotrin for the de­vel­op­ment of ac­cu­mu­la­tions with­in the NC­MA Unit Area. These fields are be­ing de­vel­oped in four phas­es to sup­ply gas to At­lantic LNG Trains 2, 3 and 4, ac­cord­ing to BG Group da­ta.

Phas­es 1 and 2 com­prised the in­stal­la­tion of the Hi­bis­cus plat­form in 2001, to­geth­er with a pipeline from NC­MA to At­lantic at Point Fortin. In 2002, BG Group and its part­ners an­nounced first gas pro­duc­tion from the Hi­bis­cus field in­to At­lantic LNG Train 2, with pro­duc­tion in­to Train 3 in 2003 and Train 4 in 2005. In 2003, de-bot­tle­neck­ing in­creased the ca­pac­i­ty of the pipeline to 30 per cent above the orig­i­nal de­sign, the group said.

A pipeline con­nects the plat­form to the ex­ist­ing Hi­bis­cus plat­form 20 kilo­me­tres away, ac­cord­ing to BG Group da­ta. First gas pro­duc­tion from Poin­set­tia was achieved in 2009. The six de­vel­op­ment well drilling pro­gramme com­plet­ed suc­cess­ful­ly in 2010, there­by in­creas­ing NC­MA de­liv­er­abil­i­ty to At­lantic. All six wells are in pro­duc­tion.

The NC­MA 4a com­pres­sion project, which will sus­tain ex­ist­ing pro­duc­tion from the NC­MA fields, was sanc­tioned by BG Group and part­ners in 2010. The BG Group da­ta book said con­struc­tion of the com­pres­sion unit com­menced in 2012, and first gas is al­so ex­pect­ed in 2014.