GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

bpTT has moved to pause its Kanikon­na project—a planned sub­sea nat­ur­al gas de­vel­op­ment project lo­cat­ed off the south­east coast of T&T—as it sharp­ens its fo­cus on ad­vanc­ing the sanc­tioned Man­akin-Cocuina cross-bor­der gas de­vel­op­ment, a de­ci­sion that un­der­scores both cap­i­tal dis­ci­pline and the ur­gency of boost­ing gas sup­ply in the Colum­bus Basin.

In Au­gust 2025, re­source cen­tre Oil­Now stat­ed that sev­er­al ma­jor fields re­main in the fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion (FID) queue, in­clud­ing Wood­side/bp’s Ca­lyp­so, Peren­co’s Onyx, and bpTT’s Kanikon­na.

These projects, once sanc­tioned, would be crit­i­cal in shoring up fu­ture gas sup­plies.

The Man­akin-Cocuina field is a sig­nif­i­cant nat­ur­al gas re­source that strad­dles the mar­itime bound­ary be­tween T&T and Venezuela, lo­cat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 68 miles off Trinidad’s south­east coast

bpTT con­firmed to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the move to pause Kanikon­na forms part of an on­go­ing re­view of its port­fo­lio as it seeks to max­imise pro­duc­tion while re­main­ing with­in its 2026 bud­get.

In clar­i­fy­ing its po­si­tion, bpTT em­pha­sised that its core de­vel­op­ment pipeline of projects re­mains in­tact.

“bp Trinidad and To­ba­go (bpTT) can con­firm that we have been as­sess­ing var­i­ous op­tions in our port­fo­lio as we work to­ward max­imis­ing pro­duc­tion from the Colum­bus Basin.

“Fol­low­ing the is­suance of the OFAC Gen­er­al Li­cence 50A this year, we have brought the Man­akin-Cocuina Trinidad/Venezuela cross bor­der op­tion back in­to our 2026 plan. Our teams are mov­ing for­ward with plans to progress this project giv­en the val­ue it can un­lock both for Trinidad and To­ba­go and for bp.

“Kanikon­na is an­oth­er one of the project op­tions in our port­fo­lio that was be­ing con­sid­ered. Through our in­vest­ment gov­er­nance process, we have tak­en the de­ci­sion to pause Kanikon­na and pri­or­i­tize Man­akin/Cocuina which al­lows us to stay with­in our 2026 bud­get,” bpTT said in its re­sponse when asked to clar­i­fy whether Kanikon­na had been can­celled.

The strate­gic shift comes amid re­newed mo­men­tum for the Man­akin-Cocuina field, which strad­dles the mar­itime bound­ary be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

The project has been rein­tro­duced in­to bpTT’s 2026 plans fol­low­ing the is­suance ear­li­er this year of the Unit­ed States Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) Gen­er­al Li­cence 50A, which al­lows cer­tain en­er­gy ac­tiv­i­ties in­volv­ing Venezuela un­der de­fined con­di­tions.

With­in in­dus­try cir­cles, the pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of Man­akin-Cocuina has been wide­ly viewed as a prag­mat­ic move, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the project’s sanc­tioned sta­tus and its po­ten­tial for faster de­liv­ery of gas vol­umes.

En­er­gy ex­pert Gre­go­ry McGuire dis­missed con­cerns about the shelv­ing of Kanikon­na, not­ing that the project had nev­er reached the lev­el of for­mal ap­proval re­quired to be con­sid­ered part of the com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ted pipeline.

“Why does this ques­tion even arise. Kanikon­na was nev­er a sanc­tioned project and should not, and as far as I’m aware, was not in the pro­jec­tions from avail­able sources. There­fore I can­not see why that must now form the ba­sis of any dis­cus­sion,” he said. 

In­stead, McGuire ar­gued that bpTT’s de­ci­sion re­flects a log­i­cal pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of re­sources.

“I think it is ob­vi­ous why Man­akin Coci­na is be­ing pri­ori­tised be­cause the project is al­ready sanc­tioned and ⁠rep­re­sents one of the quick­est paths to boost gas sup­ply,” McGuire ex­plained.

That ur­gency is close­ly tied to the needs of T&T’s down­stream en­er­gy sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly At­lantic LNG, where both bp and Shell each hold a 45 per cent stake.

“ We must al­ways bear in mind that both BP and Shell hold 45 per cent each of At­lantic. There­fore they have a vest­ed in­ter­est in prov­ing up new gas to keep the plants run­ning,” he said.

De­spite this, McGuire cau­tioned against over­con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of new projects to ful­ly ad­dress do­mes­tic gas con­straints.

“Whether their new de­vel­op­ments will have suf­fi­cient gas for NGC and our petchems is a ques­tion that can on­ly be an­swered in time. There is some op­ti­mism in the mar­ket that there will be but I think we need to wait be­fore crow­ing.

“We need to have the con­firmed num­bers for re­serves and flow rates be­fore any re­al­is­tic pro­jec­tions can be made. That will be 15 to 18 months away.” he added.

The com­pa­ny’s an­nounce­ment has trig­gered a range of fol­low-up ques­tions from the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian seek­ing deep­er in­sight in­to the im­pli­ca­tions of paus­ing Kanikon­na and ad­vanc­ing Man­akin-Cocuina.

Cen­tral among these are is­sues re­lat­ed to cap­i­tal al­lo­ca­tion. Queries have been raised about what por­tion of bpTT’s 2026 bud­get had ini­tial­ly been ear­marked for Kanikon­na, and whether that fund­ing is now be­ing redi­rect­ed to­ward the cross bor­der project.

Close­ly linked are ques­tions about com­par­a­tive project eco­nom­ics in­clud­ing seek­ing clar­i­ty on whether Man­akin-Cocuina re­quires low­er ini­tial cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture than Kanikon­na or whether its ad­van­tage lies pri­mar­i­ly in a faster time­line to first gas—an in­creas­ing­ly crit­i­cal fac­tor in T&T’s sup­ply con­strained en­vi­ron­ment.

Un­cer­tain­ty al­so sur­rounds the fu­ture of the Kanikon­na project it­self. Ques­tions have been posed about how long the pause is ex­pect­ed to last and whether there is a risk the project could be shelved en­tire­ly if Man­akin-Cocuina de­mands greater re­sources.

There is al­so in­ter­est in un­der­stand­ing how far Kanikon­na had pro­gressed tech­ni­cal­ly, in­clud­ing what seis­mic, drilling or en­gi­neer­ing work may al­ready have been com­plet­ed pri­or to the de­ci­sion.

Reg­u­la­to­ry risk has emerged as an­oth­er fo­cal point.

While OFAC Gen­er­al Li­cence 50A has re­opened the path­way for Man­akin-Cocuina, stake­hold­ers are ques­tion­ing how bpTT plans to man­age the volatil­i­ty his­tor­i­cal­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with US sanc­tions pol­i­cy.

Clar­i­fi­ca­tion has al­so been sought on whether the cur­rent li­cence ex­tends across the full life of the project or would re­quire re­new­al to sus­tain de­vel­op­ment through to com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion.

Fur­ther at­ten­tion has been di­rect­ed at the an­tic­i­pat­ed val­ue and time­line of Man­akin-Cocuina.

Ques­tions have been raised about how the project would con­tribute to bpTT’s pro­duc­tion lev­els in the Colum­bus Basin over the next three to five years, and when key mile­stones—such as a Fi­nal In­vest­ment De­ci­sion and first gas—are ex­pect­ed.

Be­yond project de­liv­ery, the eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions of paus­ing Kanikon­na are al­so un­der scruti­ny.

Fur­ther ques­tions al­so sought to seek es­ti­mates of the lo­cal con­tent val­ue as­so­ci­at­ed with the project, in­clud­ing em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, con­tracts for lo­cal firms and broad­er sup­ply chain ac­tiv­i­ty that may now be de­layed or for­gone.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the pause has raised broad­er ques­tions about do­mes­tic gas se­cu­ri­ty.

Ques­tions re­gard­ing fis­cal con­sid­er­a­tions were al­so raised, seek­ing to ex­am­ine how rev­enue streams from a do­mes­tic project like Kanikon­na—through roy­al­ties and pe­tro­le­um prof­its tax—might com­pare with those from a shared de­vel­op­ment such as Man­akin-Cocuina.

In re­sponse, bpTT said it “will share more de­tails when we are in a po­si­tion to do so” as it stressed, “There has been no change to bpTT’s sanc­tioned projects and we con­tin­ue to progress these as planned. Kanikon­na is not a sanc­tioned project and was one of our project op­tions be­ing con­sid­ered.”

Ef­forts to reach En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal were un­suc­cess­ful as as he did not re­spond.

Young Com­ments on bpTT project re­pro­gram­ming

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young, when con­tact­ed on the is­sue, not­ed that bpTT is a very strate­gic com­pa­ny and al­ways plots its gas pro­duc­tion sched­ule years in ad­vance to hold a con­sis­tent pro­duc­tion pat­tern.

He not­ed the de­ci­sion to re­pro­gramme Kanikon­na for Man­akin-Cocuina is very lay­ered and in­dica­tive of much more than ap­pears on the sur­face.

How­ev­er, he said, “I hope that it is not based on the ir­re­spon­si­ble and mis­guid­ed man­age­ment of our en­er­gy sec­tor by the Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment and con­cerns of bpTT re­gard­ing the man­age­ment of the gas sec­tor for the next few years un­til there is a change in ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

Young said he was aware that stake­hold­ers in the gas sec­tor are very “dis­sat­is­fied with the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion and in par­tic­u­lar the be­hav­iour of the in­com­pe­tent NGC chair­man and the board.”