Nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion in T&T in­creased in Ju­ly and Au­gust, af­ter out­put plunged in June, due to main­te­nance work on off­shore gas fields, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) has said.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Min­istry said it was re­spond­ing to re­cent re­ports about nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion in T&T.

The re­lease said, “In this re­gard, the MEEI ad­vis­es that nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion for the month of June 2024 was im­pact­ed by the con­duct of main­te­nance ac­tiv­i­ties by three of the ma­jor up­stream gas pro­duc­ers re­sult­ing in a 22 per cent re­duc­tion in pro­duc­tion when com­pared to the pre­vi­ous month. This de­crease in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion was trans­par­ent­ly re­flect­ed in the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Nat­ur­al Gas Month­ly Bul­letins for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary-June 2024 which is pub­lished on the MEEI’s web­site, www.en­er­gy.gov.tt.”

How­ev­er, the Min­istry ex­plained that these dis­rup­tions were ex­pect­ed.

The re­lease stat­ed, “These main­te­nance ac­tiv­i­ties, un­der­tak­en by ma­jor en­er­gy play­ers bpTT, Wood­side and Shell were planned a year in ad­vance and are an es­sen­tial com­po­nent of com­pli­ance with gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions. Among these ac­tiv­i­ties were turn­arounds which are proac­tive mea­sures to en­sure the safe­ty of all per­son­nel on the re­spec­tive fa­cil­i­ties as well as the op­ti­mi­sa­tion of process­es aimed to­wards im­prov­ing pro­duc­tion and over­all ef­fi­cien­cy.”

With the de­crease in pro­duc­tion in June, the av­er­age dai­ly pro­duc­tion for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to June 2024 stood at 2.47 bcf/d (bil­lion cu­bic feet per day). Pro­duc­tion was high­est in Feb­ru­ary at 2.73 bcf/d.

The news re­lease added, “The MEEI ad­vis­es that the de­crease in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion was shel­tered with­in the nat­ur­al gas val­ue chain by planned turn­arounds at Train IV at At­lantic LNG, Point Lisas Ni­tro­gen and the Urea plant at Nu­trien Ltd for the month of June 2024.”

The re­lease closed, “The MEEI fur­ther ad­vis­es that with the com­ple­tion of these said ac­tiv­i­ties, pre­lim­i­nary da­ta shows that nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion for the month of Ju­ly 2024 in­creased to 2.3 bcf/d and fur­ther in­creased to 2.7 bcf/d in Au­gust with pro­duc­tion for Q4 2024 pro­ject­ed to av­er­age at 2.5 bcf/d.”