Amer­i­can en­gi­neer­ing com­pa­ny Mc­Der­mott has re­ceived a con­tract from Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go for the Man­a­tee gas field de­vel­op­ment project.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the com­pa­ny said it re­ceived lim­it­ed no­tice to pro­ceed with an en­gi­neer­ing, pro­cure­ment, con­struc­tion and in­stal­la­tion (EP­CI) con­tract to do work on the field lo­cat­ed off the east coast of T&T.

The re­lease stat­ed that sub­ject to Shell tak­ing a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion, the Man­a­tee project scope is for the de­sign, pro­cure­ment, fab­ri­ca­tion, trans­porta­tion, in­stal­la­tion, and com­mis­sion­ing of a well­head plat­form, off­shore and on­shore gas pipelines.

"This award fol­lows our suc­cess­ful de­liv­ery of the front-end en­gi­neer­ing de­sign for the Man­a­tee gas field," said Ma­hesh Swami­nathan, Mc­Der­mott's se­nior vice pres­i­dent, Sub­sea and Float­ing Fa­cil­i­ties.

"It is tes­ta­ment to Mc­Der­mott's in­te­grat­ed EP­CI ca­pa­bil­i­ties built over the last 100 years around the world in­clud­ing many suc­cess­ful projects in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We will again de­liv­er for Shell, build­ing on a part­ner­ship marked by trust, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and shared suc­cess, to ex­e­cute this im­por­tant project."

The Man­a­tee field is a con­ven­tion­al gas de­vel­op­ment and once com­mis­sioned, gas will sup­ply both do­mes­tic and ex­port mar­kets from Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Man­a­tee field is part of the cross-bor­der Lo­ran-Man­a­tee dis­cov­ery, shared by Trinidad and Venezuela. The field is be­lieved to hold around 10 tril­lion cu­bic feet (Tcf) of nat­ur­al gas, with 7.3 Tcf on Venezuela’s side and the re­main­ing 2.7 Tcf on Trinidad’s side.

In 2019, the T&T Gov­ern­ment and Venezuela ex­e­cut­ed an agree­ment to al­low each coun­try to in­de­pen­dent­ly de­vel­op its share of hy­dro­car­bon re­sources from the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee gas field. The gas field strad­dles the mar­itime bor­der be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and Shell signed an amend­ed do­mes­tic gas sales con­tract to in­cor­po­rate a share of the nat­ur­al gas vol­umes from the Shell-op­er­at­ed Man­a­tee field, once the project is sanc­tioned.

In a state­ment, NGC said the amend­ed sales con­tract en­ti­tles NGC to pur­chase gas pro­duced from one of the coun­try’s largest off­shore fields, to sup­ply to the down­stream sec­tor across the medi­um term.

Speak­ing at the event, NGC’s Pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan ap­plaud­ed the ef­forts made to re­alise this mile­stone agree­ment.

“Man­a­tee rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant re­source for Trinidad and To­ba­go, and every step we take to­ward bring­ing this field on­line bright­ens our prospects for fu­ture do­mes­tic sup­ply. Our teams have laboured to bring us to this point, and we ac­knowl­edge with deep grat­i­tude the quan­tum of work de­liv­ered, as well as the im­pact it will have for our coun­try. We do recog­nise that we have some dis­tance to trav­el be­fore we can ac­cess gas from Man­a­tee, but we are com­mit­ted to the out­come and op­ti­mistic that we can bring this project to fruition, in part­ner­ship with all stake­hold­ers.”