The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC) and Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go (Shell) yes­ter­day 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.

The sign­ing took place yes­ter­day at the Hilton Trinidad and was at­tend­ed by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, along with the prin­ci­pals of both sig­na­to­ry com­pa­nies.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, NGC said the amend­ed gas sales con­tract will en­ti­tle it to pur­chase gas pro­duced from one of the coun­try’s largest off­shore fields, to sup­ply to the down­stream sec­tor across the medi­um term.

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

It said both Shell and NGC are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to mon­e­tise this re­serve—Shell as the op­er­a­tor re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion, and NGC as the en­ti­ty that will fa­cil­i­tate re­ceipt and pro­cess­ing of the gas via its Beach­field fa­cil­i­ty.

Shell’s se­nior vice pres­i­dent and coun­try chair, Eu­gene Okpere said, “This do­mes­tic gas sales con­tract is fur­ther ev­i­dence of Shell’s com­mit­ment to part­ner­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to achieve its goal of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty. To­day al­so marks a crit­i­cal step to­ward en­abling Shell’s next mile­stone of Fi­nal In­vest­ment De­ci­sion for the de­vel­op­ment of the Man­a­tee project.”

Speak­ing at the event, NGC’s pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan ap­plaud­ed the ef­forts made to re­alise this mile­stone agree­ment, “Man­a­tee rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant re­source for T&T, 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 on 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.”

The Man­a­tee gas field is part of a larg­er field called the Lo­ran—Man­a­tee, which strad­dles the Venezuela and T&T mar­itime bor­ders.

The field is es­ti­mat­ed to have to­tal proven re­serves of about 10.25 tril­lion cu­bic feet with Venezuela own­ing 73.75 per cent of the joint field and T&T own­ing the re­main­ing 26.25 per cent.