An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The En­er­gy Cham­ber says it sees the re­struc­tur­ing of the At­lantic LNG (AL­NG) own­er­ship as a pos­i­tive move which will al­low in­vest­ment in­to the plant, in­clud­ing sup­port to re­duce the car­bon foot­print of the liqui­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) pro­duced by At­lantic.

On Tues­day, it was re­port­ed that the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) would re­ceive a ten per cent stake in an agree­ment for a new com­mer­cial struc­ture for At­lantic LNG.

The sign­ing cul­mi­nat­ed five years of ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the par­ties and opens the door for greater rev­enue to be de­rived by the State from the At­lantic LNG trains.

For the NGC, which re­mits tax­es and div­i­dends to the State, it al­so means it will have a greater stake in the LNG busi­ness.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions be­gan in 2018 and were ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by March 31 but were de­layed and on­ly con­clud­ed last week.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the En­er­gy Cham­ber wel­comed the fi­nal sign­ing of the At­lantic re­struc­tur­ing.

It said this was a ma­jor de­vel­op­ment for T&T’s gas sec­tor and the over­all econ­o­my of the coun­try.

“While the spe­cif­ic de­tails of the new com­mer­cial and le­gal struc­ture are not yet known, we are cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic that the new struc­ture will pos­i­tive­ly in­flu­ence much-need­ed fu­ture in­vest­ment in up­stream gas pro­duc­tion.

“In­creased in­vest­ment in­to up­stream pro­duc­tion will pro­vide ad­di­tion­al work for the ser­vice com­pa­nies and con­trac­tors, in­creased se­cu­ri­ty of sup­ply to the down­stream plants, and in­creased gov­ern­ment rev­enue,” the En­er­gy Cham­ber ex­plained.

Share­hold­ing struc­ture

The share­hold­ers of At­lantic LNG are now bpTT, Shell and the NGC. The Chi­na In­vest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (CIC), which had an eq­ui­ty in­ter­est in AL­NG Train 1, ex­it­ed last year.

Be­fore the new agree­ment, the ex­ist­ing share­hold­ers’ arrange­ments in AL­NG’s four trains were:

Train 1: Shell—46 per cent; bp—34 per cent; NGC—10 per cent; CIC—10 per cent.

Train 2: Shell—57.5 per cent; bp—42.5 per cent.

Train 3: Shell—57.5 per cent, bp—42.5 per cent.

Train 4: Shell—51.11 per cent, bp—37.78 per cent, NGC—11.11 per cent

Man­a­tee and Drag­on field dis­cus­sions

Yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley met with top Shell of­fi­cials in Lon­don, where the Man­a­tee and Drag­on field projects were dis­cussed.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, in a re­lease, said the talks fo­cused on progress in both fields, as well as oth­er po­ten­tial projects that could as­sist in se­cur­ing sus­tain­able gas sup­plies for this coun­try.

The Shell lead­er­ship al­so re­it­er­at­ed its po­si­tion that the com­pa­ny re­mains aligned with T&T, as it in­tends to con­tin­ue in­vest­ing in the LNG busi­ness, which is nec­es­sary for en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter not­ed that the meet­ing was at­tend­ed by Shell Glob­al CEO Wael Sawan, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Young, and Shell T&T se­nior vice pres­i­dent and coun­try chair Adam Low­mass.

Al­so in at­ten­dance were Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the En­er­gy Min­istry Pen­ne­lope Brad­shaw-Niles and In­te­grat­ed Gas and Up­stream di­rec­tor of Shell Glob­al Zoë Yu­jnovich.