En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine yes­ter­day sought to clar­i­fy the con­tin­ued neg­a­tive spec­u­la­tion over the mas­sive Lo­ran/Man­a­tee field which strad­dles the bor­der be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad.In an e-mail in­ter­view, the min­is­ter said he signed the 2013 Agreed Min­utes con­cern­ing the func­tion­al struc­ture of the Unit Op­er­a­tor of the Lo­ran/Man­a­tee area, which is not a com­plet­ed agree­ment.

"The process is by no means com­plet­ed. There are oth­er agree­ments that will have to be signed, how­ev­er, the most re­cent sign­ing is a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward," Ram­nar­ine said.Ram­nar­ine said the coun­try will in fact ben­e­fit from the re­cent agree­ment.

"The main ben­e­fit is that nat­ur­al gas that was strand­ed will be utilised for the ben­e­fit of both coun­tries. Please note that a de­vel­op­ment plan has to be first sub­mit­ted to the di­rect­ing com­mit­tee. This has nei­ther been for­mu­lat­ed nor has it been sub­mit­ted. Po­si­tions and views have been ad­vanced by Venezuela and po­si­tions and views have been ad­vanced by Trinidad and To­ba­go. It is our view and po­si­tion that the nat­ur­al gas with­in Man­a­tee (the Trinidad side of Lo­ran/Man­a­tee) will at the very least come to our lo­cal mar­ket to be utilised for the ben­e­fit of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

"Please re­mem­ber that a de­vel­op­ment plan is yet to be agreed. Note, too, that there are four com­pa­nies in­volved–the two Chevron com­pa­nies, PDVSA and BG T&T. These com­pa­nies would al­so have in­put in the for­mu­la­tion of a de­vel­op­ment plan."

Ram­nar­ine did con­firm that the agree­ment did not state whether gas­from the Lo­ran side of the cross-bor­der find will come to Trinidad but said "the po­si­tion that we have ad­vanced which has been con­sis­tent over the years is that at the very least the gas that is in Man­a­tee will come to Trinidad via pipeline."

The larg­er por­tion of the field, is 73.3 per cent on the Venezue­lan side of the bor­der. While the Man­a­tee side of the field, just over 26 per cent in on the lo­cal side of the bor­der.Re­gard­ing the four way share-up of the vot­ing rights, Ram­nar­ine said that Trinidad's 16.97 per cent of the vot­ing share was "in no way a com­pro­mise."

"It is sim­ply a fac­tor of the Gov­ern­ment's en­ti­tle­ment to gas un­der the pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract. The re­main­der is ap­por­tioned to Chevron T&T 4.98 per cent and BG T&T 4.98 per cent. There­fore, GORTT 16.97 per cent plus Chevron 4.98 per cent plus BG T&T 4.98 per cent equals 26.94 per cent. This is in keep­ing with the terms of the Block 6 pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract," he said.

He did con­firm that "ex­tend­ed well test­ing" is be­ing con­duct­ed in the Kapok/Do­ra­do, the small­er of the three finds along that same bor­der."To ob­tain fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the ex­tent to which the reser­voirs strad­dle the de­lim­i­ta­tion line be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go, an al­lo­ca­tion of the per­cent­age of gas per­tain­ing to both Trinidad and Venezuela is be­ing record­ed. An es­crow ac­count has not been es­tab­lished for this pur­pose."

He not­ed that no dol­lar val­ue could yet be placed on the mega-find, as no re­al mar­ket­ing arrange­ments have been es­tab­lished just yet.

Ve­to pow­er

When asked about the is­sue of ve­to pow­er buried in the agree­ment, Ram­nar­ine re­ferred back to his state­ment in Par­lia­ment."There is, how­ev­er, a right of ve­to that says that both gov­ern­ments must agree on the de­ci­sions of the di­rect­ing com­mit­tee. If there is a de­ci­sion that we are not in agree­ment to, we can ve­to that de­ci­sion and in like man­ner the Venezue­lans can ex­er­cise a sim­i­lar ve­to. There is a sec­ond ve­to em­bed­ded in the agree­ment that con­cerns the ex­ploita­tion and de­vel­op­ment plan.

"We have ad­vanced that, at the very least, our gas (the 26.94 per cent) should come to this coun­try. The po­si­tion of Venezuela has been that they would like to build a pipeline to Guiria where their 73.06 per cent would be mon­e­tised. We have al­so ad­vanced a po­si­tion that the Venezue­lans may want to con­sid­er some of their gas com­ing to T&T giv­en the prox­im­i­ty to this coun­try of the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee field and the well de­vel­oped gas trans­mis­sion and pro­cess­ing in­fra­struc­ture we have in this coun­try.

"There is to date no agree­ment on this mat­ter."Ram­nar­ine al­so had a mes­sage for the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment who have been crit­i­cal of both him and the agree­ment:"I am the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy. I have to be cir­cum­spect with what I say, as there are is­sues of the re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela and the in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion of T&T to con­sid­er. I don't have the lux­u­ry of the PNM to say what­ev­er I want and don't both­er with the con­se­quences."