RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says a sig­nif­i­cant boost in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion is on the hori­zon fol­low­ing the ar­rival of heavy equip­ment at the Point Lisas port on Fri­day.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the fa­cil­i­ty, Mooni­lal viewed over­sized com­po­nents shipped overnight from Hous­ton by Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration. The equip­ment—some pieces mea­sur­ing more than 50 feet in length and 15 feet in height—is des­tined for the com­pa­ny’s Casadu­ra gas fa­cil­i­ty in the Or­toire Block, Rio Claro.

The car­go was han­dled lo­cal­ly by Ramps Lo­gis­tics Lim­it­ed, which spe­cialis­es in oil and gas shore­base man­age­ment and freight for­ward­ing.

Mooni­lal said the equip­ment will sup­port a gas com­pres­sion project ex­pect­ed to near­ly dou­ble pro­duc­tion at the fa­cil­i­ty from 10 mil­lion to 20 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day.

“This will sta­bilise pres­sure along the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny-op­er­at­ed 20-inch pipeline from Biche to Guayagua­yare and the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate,” he said, not­ing the project is ex­pect­ed to come on stream by June.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, the ini­tia­tive forms part of a broad­er push by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries to strength­en out­put and re­li­a­bil­i­ty in the gas sec­tor.

He al­so point­ed to what he de­scribed as a turn­around in the in­dus­try over the past year un­der the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Mooni­lal said gas pro­duc­tion and de­liv­ery have sta­bilised af­ter more than a decade of un­der­per­for­mance, with over­all out­put ris­ing from an es­ti­mat­ed 52,000 to 65,000 bar­rels per day. He added that the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go has record­ed its high­est prof­it in 11 years at $3.2 bil­lion.

He al­so high­light­ed on­go­ing ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing what he said is the largest seis­mic da­ta ac­qui­si­tion ex­er­cise ever un­der­tak­en lo­cal­ly by Exxon­Mo­bil, now about 60 per cent com­plete and tar­get­ing an Au­gust fin­ish.

The min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to pur­sue re­gion­al en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion, ref­er­enc­ing re­cent en­gage­ments with Guyana and planned par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Suri­name En­er­gy, Oil and Gas Sum­mit in June, as well as progress on cross-bor­der arrange­ments with Venezuela.

Mooni­lal added that so-called en­er­gy ac­cel­er­a­tion hubs are help­ing to stream­line ap­provals by bring­ing key agen­cies to­geth­er, while col­lab­o­ra­tion with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty has re­duced the time need­ed to se­cure Cer­tifi­cates of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance.

The vis­it was at­tend­ed by sev­er­al in­dus­try stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing ex­ec­u­tives from Touch­stone, Ramps Lo­gis­tics, Unit­ed Africa Ship­ping, Sam­my Mul­ti­lift Ser­vice Ltd and the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion.

Mooni­lal thanked those in­volved in the project, de­scrib­ing the de­vel­op­ment as part of a wider pe­ri­od of ac­tiv­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor, with in­creased in­ter­est from in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers such as Chevron and the Chi­na Na­tion­al Off­shore Oil Cor­po­ra­tion.

He al­so not­ed re­cent mile­stones, in­clud­ing the ear­ly start-up of bpTT’s Cypre Phase 2 project in No­vem­ber 2025, which is now pro­duc­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 45,000 bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent per day.

In ad­di­tion, Mooni­lal ref­er­enced the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion ear­li­er this year to be­gin dis­burs­ing $1 mil­lion ex gra­tia pay­ments to the lone sur­vivor and fam­i­lies af­fect­ed by the 2022 Paria div­ing tragedy.

He said the com­bi­na­tion of in­vest­ment, reg­u­la­to­ry re­form and re­gion­al en­gage­ment is po­si­tion­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go to strength­en its en­er­gy sec­tor and ex­pand pro­duc­tion in the months ahead. Dr Mooni­lal al­so said that the Touch­stone de­vel­op­ment is just one chap­ter in a busy pe­ri­od for the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.

He not­ed that from deep­wa­ter prospects to re­gion­al diplo­ma­cy, the Min­istry has main­tained a steady pace of ac­tiv­i­ty across mul­ti­ple fronts.

“The re­turn of Exxon­Mo­bil to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy land­scape, along­side grow­ing in­ter­est from Chevron and the Chi­na Na­tion­al Off­shore Oil Cor­po­ra­tion, re­flects strong in­ter­na­tion­al con­fi­dence in the coun­try as an in­vest­ment des­ti­na­tion,” he added.

On the reg­u­la­to­ry side, Dr Mooni­lal said the Min­istry has worked with the EMA to sig­nif­i­cant­ly short­en the time re­quired to is­sue Cer­tifi­cates of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance for ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment projects, a de­lib­er­ate push to cut red tape and im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy across the sec­tor.

He al­so not­ed that in Jan­u­ary 2026, the Gov­ern­ment be­gan dis­burs­ing TT$1 mil­lion in ex gra­tia pay­ments to Christo­pher Boodram—the sole sur­vivor of the 2022 Paria div­ing tragedy—and to the fam­i­lies of the four men who lost their lives, of­fer­ing com­pas­sion­ate fi­nan­cial sup­port as those af­fect­ed con­tin­ue to cope with their grief.

He not­ed that the Min­istry played a key role in sup­port­ing bpTT’s Cypre Phase 2 de­vel­op­ment, which achieved first gas in No­vem­ber 2025 — ahead of its orig­i­nal­ly planned 2026 time­line. The Cypre field is now pro­duc­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 45,000 bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent per day, di­rect­ly strength­en­ing the coun­try’s ex­port ca­pac­i­ty.