Pre­lim­i­nary work on Drag­on Gas project has start­ed, as an as­sess­ment meant to pave the way for gas to be pumped from the Venezue­lan gas field to a plat­form in Trinidad wa­ters has be­gun.

A state­ment from the Min­istry of En­er­gy yes­ter­day said the Dona Jose 2 has start­ed a geo­phys­i­cal and ge­ot­ech­ni­cal sur­vey from the Drag­on field to the Shell-op­er­at­ed Hi­bis­cus Plat­form.

It said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, along with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Shell and T&T’s whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny toured the ves­sel at Tem­blado­ra Port, Ch­aguara­mas on Fri­day.

The min­istry said the Dona Jose 2 ves­sel, char­tered by Geo­hidra, a Venezue­lan com­pa­ny con­tract­ed by Shell, will un­der­take the geo­phys­i­cal and ge­ot­ech­ni­cal sur­vey to ac­quire da­ta with the ves­sel’s side scan sonar, multi­beam echo sounder and oth­er sur­vey tech­nol­o­gy on­board.

It not­ed that this first phase of the project is small but crit­i­cal as it rep­re­sents the first phys­i­cal work to be done by Shell on the Drag­on field.

These sub­sea sur­veys will al­low Shell to col­lect tech­ni­cal da­ta to as­sess the sta­tus of ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture and tech­ni­cal da­ta to sup­port the de­sign of new fa­cil­i­ties to be in­stalled as well as the de­sign and rout­ing for the in­stal­la­tion of a 22-kilo­me­tre pipeline from the Drag­on sub­sea field to the Shell op­er­at­ed Hi­bis­cus plat­form, pend­ing Fi­nal In­vest­ment De­ci­sion.

The Drag­on Gas project is ex­pect­ed to ex­port gas from the Drag­on Field in Venezuela to Shell’s Hi­bis­cus plat­form off T&T’s North Coast.

The min­istry said the com­mence­ment of the ge­ot­ech­ni­cal sur­veys comes at an ac­cel­er­at­ed speed of on­ly ten months af­ter T&T re­ceived a 30-year li­cence to ex­plore, pro­duce and ex­port gas from the Venezue­lan nat­ur­al gas field to T&T.