The coun­try's largest nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­er BPTT has de­cid­ed to close its of­fices for a month as it re­sponse to the COVID-19 threat.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia BPTT said for the past week its Health and Cri­sis Man­age­ment teams have been work­ing on our re­sponse to COVID-19.

It not­ed that in keep­ing with the rest of the BP Group it had de­cid­ed to close its Port of Spain and Ga­le­o­ta of­fices and staff not re­quired at work will be al­lowed to op­er­ate re­mote­ly.

BPTT said: "BP Group has an­nounced that any staff not re­quired at a work site for safe and re­li­able op­er­a­tions, will tran­si­tion to work­ing vir­tu­al­ly from home un­til at least 15 April 2020.  As a re­sult, our Port of Spain and Ga­le­o­ta of­fices will be closed dur­ing this pe­ri­od."

It said as a multi­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tion with glob­al op­er­a­tions and large move­ment of staff across re­gions to sup­port op­er­a­tions, the com­pa­ny has tak­en this mea­sure to min­i­mize the risk of ex­po­sure to COVID-19 while main­tain­ing crit­i­cal op­er­a­tions.

BPTT pro­duces half the coun­try's to­tal out­put of nat­ur­al gas.