Renu­ka Singh

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine has dis­tanced him­self from the ne­go­ti­a­tion process that al­leged­ly led to an al­most ten per cent drop in lo­cal vot­ing rights over the cross-bor­der Lo­ran/Man­a­tee bloc.This move comes on the heels of scathing crit­i­cism that the min­is­ter had mucked up decade-long bi­lat­er­al talks be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad that, if ne­go­ti­at­ed prop­er­ly, could have boost­ed lo­cal en­er­gy re­serves and made al­lowances for Venezue­lan pipelines to pass through the lo­cal re­fin­ery.

Ram­nar­ine has in­stead shift­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the ne­go­ti­a­tion to en­er­gy ex­perts hired by his min­istry."The most pro­fes­sion­al and qual­i­fied pub­lic ser­vants are at the helm of En­er­gy and For­eign Af­fairs. It was they that ne­go­ti­at­ed the agree­ment...not the min­is­ter," Ram­nar­ine said in a text."I am speak­ing about peo­ple like Sel­wyn Lash­ley and Am­bas­sador Ger­ald Thomp­son," he added.

Lash­ley is the act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of En­er­gy, while Thomp­son is af­fil­i­at­ed with the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs. In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view Fri­day, Lash­ley said he was in a meet­ing and could not speak at the time. Though he asked that ques­tions be texted to him, he did not re­spond up to late last night.While Ram­nar­ine is sat­is­fied with the agree­ment, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has lashed out at him for de­flect­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

"It is a poor min­is­ter, when faced with chal­lenge by the op­po­si­tion on a mat­ter un­der his purview, seeks to blame and put the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on pub­lic ser­vants," Row­ley said in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian at his of­fice on Fri­day."Pub­lic ser­vants do not make pol­i­cy and this is a pol­i­cy is­sue," Row­ley said.

Ram­nar­ine's side-step on the bi­lat­er­al ne­go­ti­a­tions comes just days af­ter he told the coun­try that there was no agree­ment, just the es­tab­lish­ment of steer­ing com­mit­tees. He was quot­ed in the me­dia on Wednes­day as say­ing that "there's to date no agree­ment on this mat­ter. This will be the sub­ject of a de­vel­op­ment plan."

In a re­sponse to state­ments by Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert last week, Ram­nar­ine said "no de­ci­sion has been made thus far re­gard­ing where the nat­ur­al gas in the field would be mon­e­tised, al­though po­si­tions have for some years been ar­tic­u­lat­ed by both coun­tries."Row­ley, who has since pub­licly bashed Ram­nar­ine for mess­ing up the sen­si­tive bi­lat­er­al deal, said the Venezue­lan En­er­gy Min­is­ter, Rafael Ramirez, seems to be un­der a dif­fer­ent im­pres­sion.

Row­ley held up sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al press ar­ti­cles in which he said Venezuela seemed to be mov­ing "full steam ahead."One Reuters re­port, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 11, states that "un­der the agree­ment, PDVSA will build a gas pipeline of about 170 miles from the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee bloc to the Paria Penin­su­la on the Venezue­lan coast. That area is the fo­cus of a high pro­file but long de­layed Venezue­lan off­shore nat­ur­al gas project called Mariscal Su­cre, where re­serves are es­ti­mat­ed at 14.7 tcf.

"That sound­ing like this isn't a done deal?" Row­ley asked.

Steer­ing com­mit­tees

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that two steer­ing com­mit­tees were es­tab­lished when for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan signed the Lo­ran Man­a­tee Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) back in Au­gust 2010. But Ram­nar­ine said that these three com­mit­tees–Di­rect­ing Com­mit­tee, In­vest­ment Com­mit­tee and Ex­e­cut­ing En­ti­ty–were all part of the lat­est agree­ment signed on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2013.

"These new com­mit­tees were not pro­vid­ed for in ei­ther the 2003 MoU or the 2007 Frame­work Treaty," Ram­nar­ine said.Seep­er­sad-Bachan, how­ev­er, said that while she did es­tab­lish steer­ing com­mit­tees back in 2010, the crux of her MoU was to fos­ter fur­ther dis­cus­sions to al­low more ben­e­fits to the coun­try.

"Yes, I signed that MoU that in­clud­ed the steer­ing com­mit­tees, but we had al­so agreed to have fur­ther dis­cus­sions take place re­gard­ing set­ting up ser­vice com­pa­nies on the south­ern side of the is­land to fa­cil­i­tate fol­low-on busi­ness. I have not seen the agree­ment that was re­cent­ly signed, but I have not if that was part of it," she said in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view Fri­day.

What did we get?

Row­ley again called on Ram­nar­ine to say just what Trinidad and To­ba­go stood to gain from the agree­ment."There has been no talk so far on how this is ben­e­fit­ing this coun­try. All the pub­lic knows so far is that Venezuela mov­ing full steam ahead," Row­ley said.Bi­lat­er­al talks on the cross-bor­der finds be­gan un­der the PNM with for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and late Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez head­lin­ing the his­tor­i­cal ac­cord.

"I was there. Af­ter ten years of try­ing to en­sure this deal ben­e­fit­ed this coun­try, this En­er­gy Min­is­ter comes and gives it all away?" Row­ley said."All the risk we took come to naught now?"Row­ley said if they were will­ing to ac­cept what Ram­nar­ine ac­cept­ed, that agree­ment could have been signed years ago.

"We could have done that long time, but we have been pin­ning our hopes on the liquifi­ca­tion as­pect of the deal. What about our re­serves? How are we to at­tract more en­er­gy busi­ness when we have dwin­dling re­serves and then this min­is­ter giv­ing away what we could have had in the fu­ture?"

Vot­ing rights:

The Sun­day Guardian ob­tained a copy of the doc­u­ment head­lined Agreed min­utes con­cern­ing the func­tion­al struc­ture and gov­er­nance of the unit op­er­a­tor for the Lo­ran/Man­a­tee unit area. In that doc­u­ment, Ram­nar­ine and his Venezue­lan coun­ter­part Rafael Ramirez Car­reno agreed on three com­mit­tees: di­rect­ing, in­vest­ment and ex­e­cut­ing. It is the di­rect­ing com­mit­tee which en­ables vot­ing rights over the find.

�2 Trinidad..................16.97 per cent

�2 Venezuela..............4.61 per cent

�2 PDVSA Gas.............35.65 per cent

�2 Chevron Glob­al.......22.79 per cent

�2 Chevron Trinidad.....4.98 per cent

�2 BGTT.......................4.98 per cent

One en­er­gy ex­pert, af­fil­i­at­ed with the ten-year-old Lo­ran/Man­a­tee bi­lat­er­al talks, said if Trinidad added its share with Chevron Trinidad and BGTT, it would be back to the al­most 27 per cent of the vot­ing rights as­so­ci­at­ed with the per­cent­age of the find that be­longs on the Trinidad side of the shared bor­der."How­ev­er, do you re­al­ly think the lo­cal Chevron will vote against its par­ent, Chevron Glob­al? Would BG vote with Trinidad should it come to that?" the en­er­gy ex­pert asked.

The en­er­gy ex­pert al­so re­called that back in May, Chevron in­vest­ed $2 bil­lion in PDVSA's en­er­gy out­put ven­ture in a bid to boost its pro­duc­tion.This, they say, is in­dica­tive of the close ties be­tween Chevron and Venezuela, which again leaves Trinidad and To­ba­go out in the cold.

Af­ter Seep­er­sad-Bachan signed the 2010 MoU, there was an at­tempt to con­tin­ue ne­go­ti­a­tions for one of the lo­cal en­er­gy com­pa­nies, Petrotrin or the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), to al­so hold vot­ing rights in the agree­ment. That, the en­er­gy ex­pert said, was not a part of this new agree­ment."She and Ramirez al­so agreed to hold fur­ther talks about let­ting the gas pass through Trinidad, but that, too, did not ma­te­ri­alise in this agree­ment," the en­er­gy ex­pert said.

Cross-bor­der fields

Of the three cross-bor­der fields, the Lo­ran Man­a­tee holds the largest re­serve–10.3 tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf). That is bro­ken up in­to three pock­ets–Dol­phin, Dol­phin Deep and Starfish.The sec­ond largest bloc: Cocuina Man­akin has 0.74 tcf of re­serves (of which Venezuela was al­lo­cat­ed 64 per cent) and the Do­ra­do-Kapot field which con­tains 0.31 tcf, with Trinidad and To­ba­go hold­ing 84 per cent."Even added to­geth­er, those two fields is just 1 tcf, that is not help­ing our re­serves," Row­ley said.

But the sit­u­a­tion may be more dire than that, an en­er­gy ex­pert, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said. The ex­pert said that one of those fields has al­ready been ex­ploit­ed by Amo­co and the mon­ey placed in es­crow for Venezuela."One of those small fields is al­ready emp­ty, there is just one oth­er now," the ex­pert said.

Chevron's fact­sheet on Trinidad states that the East Coast Ma­rine Area (EC­MA) where the all three fields are lo­cat­ed "plays an im­por­tant role in Chevron's glob­al ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion pro­gramme."Ac­cord­ing to that fact sheet, Chevron Trinidad and To­ba­go Re­sources SRL, has a 50 per cent non-op­er­at­ed work­ing in­ter­est in the three blocs in the EC­MA and 50 per cent op­er­at­ing in­ter­est in the Man­a­tee area of Block 6(d).

Ram­nar­ine's trump card:

The Ve­to

Ac­cord­ing to sec­tion 2.4.2 un­der the head­ing "vot­ing rights," a "two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty vote shall be re­quired for fi­nal de­ci­sions of the di­rect­ing com­mit­tee, sub­ject to a right of ve­to ex­er­cis­able by the gov­ern­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go or the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela if it con­sid­ers that its sov­er­eign in­ter­est may be af­fect­ed.""Is he or Venezuela go­ing to use that ve­to when things are al­ready on-stream? When you go­ing to use ve­to pow­er? When you al­ready put us off the ta­ble?" Row­ley asked.