Raphael John-Lall

Venezue­lan en­er­gy con­sul­tant Dr Ein­stein Mil­lán Ar­cia is ac­cus­ing T&T’s Gov­ern­ment of down­play­ing the true ex­tent of the en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age caused by the oil three weeks ago.

On Mon­day, Venezuela’s For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Yván Gil de­mand­ed com­pen­sa­tion for the oil spill and claimed that T&T’s Gov­ern­ment has not been re­spond­ing to Venezuela’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­lat­ing to the oil spill.

Gil said there has been a re­al eco­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact with over 140 species of fish af­fect­ed adding that this is not the first time there has been an oil spill from T&T in Venezuela’s wa­ters.

The For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter warned of an im­pact on 1,625 square kilo­me­ters in 12 strate­gic wet­land sys­tems, as well as on the ac­tiv­i­ty of more than 500 fish­er­men.

Mil­lán Ar­cia—a promi­nent for­mer PDVSA con­sul­tant and Venezue­lan en­er­gy an­a­lyst who has a PhD from Ok­la­homa Uni­ver­si­ty in the US—gave his views on the re­cent oil spill and oth­er en­er­gy re­la­tions be­tween Venezuela and T&T in a re­cent in­ter­view with Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

From 2016 to 2017, he was a per­son­al ad­vi­sor to for­mer Venezue­lan Oil Min­is­ter Nel­son Martínez and he does con­sul­tan­cy work through­out the Mid­dle East and Africa.

In re­sponse to a Venezuela’s Gov­ern­ment com­mu­niqué, T&T’s Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries re­leased an ac­count of the in­ci­dent three weeks ago con­firm­ing that Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um de­tect­ed an oil spill at its main off­shore field at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7.25 am on May 1.

The Min­istry re­port­ed that oil spill tra­jec­to­ry mod­el­ling in­di­cat­ed a risk of un­treat­ed hy­dro­car­bons po­ten­tial­ly cross­ing in­to Venezue­lan wa­ters.

The spill was es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 bar­rels of oil, and dai­ly in­spec­tions have since shown no re­cur­rence.

Mil­lán Ar­cia dis­agrees with the Min­istry of En­er­gy’s as­sess­ment that the spill was on­ly 10 bar­rels.

“This is im­pos­si­ble, giv­en that the hy­po­thet­i­cal area that a spill of just 10 bar­rels of crude oil would cov­er would not ex­ceed, at most, be­tween 0.02 and 0.2 square kilo­me­ters, con­sid­er­ing a film thick­ness that varies due to wind con­di­tions and the tur­bu­lence of the wa­ter dis­charge in the area sur­round­ing the Orinoco Delta. This area was clear­ly cal­cu­lat­ed for con­ve­nience and “fits the Trinida­di­an min­is­ter’s own nar­ra­tive.”

Sim­i­lar to Venezuela’s For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Mil­lán Ar­cia called on T&T’s Gov­ern­ment to pay for the dam­age that Venezuela has suf­fered.

“This is not the first time that spills have oc­curred from the neigh­bour­ing is­land, im­pact­ing the Venezue­lan ecosys­tem. It is time to firm­ly de­mand that Trinidad and To­ba­go as­sumes its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and pay every cent for the en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age re­pairs, in­clud­ing cleanup and restor­ing the ecosys­tem’s bal­ance.”

Venezuela es­sen­tial to re­viv­ing T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor

Mil­lán Ar­cia gave the view that T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor faces many chal­lenges and ven­tures with Venezuela are es­sen­tial if T&T is to ad­vance its gas projects.

He point­ed out that in the 21st cen­tu­ry, T&T reached peak oil and gas pro­duc­tion in 2005 and 2009 re­spec­tive­ly, but has been on the de­cline since then.

“De­spite ex­plorato­ry and re­de­vel­op­ment ef­forts from glob­al oil and gas ma­jors like Shell, Exxon, and BP, pro­duc­tion con­tin­ues to fall at a pseu­do-con­stant rate of 3.2 per cent for the hy­dro­car­bons liq­uids, and two per cent for nat­ur­al gas. Crude oil pro­duc­ing as­sets start­ed show­ing a high­er de­cline rate rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly in the de­vel­op­ment stage, while for the case nat­ur­al gas, they re­mained rel­a­tive­ly con­stant. This be­hav­ior is be­lieved to be a com­bined re­sult of vol­u­met­ric reser­voirs lo­cat­ed in lim­it­ed and high­ly com­part­men­talised for­ma­tions.”

Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures he gave, dur­ing quar­ter 1 of 2026, Trinidad crude oil and con­den­sate pro­duc­tion av­er­aged some 52.000 bar­rels per day (BPD), while nat­ur­al gas out­put about 2.59 bil­lion cu­bic feet per day (Bcfd).

“To date, no ma­jor new oil or gas dis­cov­er­ies have come on­line. Exxon is con­tin­u­ing ef­forts in deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration in the sev­en new blocks, but no oil or gas pro­duc­tion from these is yet con­tribut­ing to the is­land port­fo­lio, as ex­plorato­ry re­sults are still com­mer­cial­ly in­con­clu­sive.”

He said the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee field, a joint as­set ex­tend­ing across the Venezuela-Trinidad ma­rine bor­der, con­tains es­ti­mat­ed gas re­serves of near­ly 10.3 TcF, with 73.75 per­cent of the to­tal be­long­ing to Venezuela.

He point­ed out that on the Trinida­di­an side, the Man­a­tee field be­gan drilling ear­ly in 2026, but it is not ex­pect­ed to pro­duce un­til late 2027 or ear­ly 2028. Man­a­tee alone does not guar­an­tee a net pos­i­tive ROI for the op­er­a­tor with­out the gas from Lo­ran-Venezuela, as out of each bar­rel of oil equiv­a­lent pro­duced from the shared as­set, the same 73.75 per­cent to 26.25 per cent in­ter­est ra­tio ap­plies.

“A num­ber of small­er gas projects in­clud­ing; Cypre, Men­to, Co­conut, Gin­ger, Frangi­pani, Onyx, Kanikon­na, and Aphrodite from BP, Shell, Peren­co, and EOG, were ear­ly pro­duced help­ing, to some ex­tent, to par­tial­ly off­set pro­duc­tion de­cay in pre­ex­ist­ing fields. These projects were most­ly un­der­de­vel­oped, or in pre-FID stage. Un­for­tu­nate­ly for Trinidad, most of these fields are cap­i­tal in­ten­sive and low-re­turn, pre­cise­ly be­cause of the low rel­a­tive de­liv­er­abil­i­ty, and high lift­ing and cor­po­rate costs com­pared to larg­er oil and gas fields.”

He al­so said the Wood­side En­er­gy Ca­lyp­so deep­wa­ter gas project re­mains stalled with­out a Fi­nal In­vest­ment De­ci­sion (FID) for sim­i­lar rea­sons.

“This project in­cludes the uni­ti­sa­tion of block-23(a) and TTDAA-14. Im­por­tant to men­tion that so called 3.5 TcF of sup­posed gas re­serves are not re­serves, but re­sources, whose eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty has not yet been rig­or­ous­ly es­tab­lished.

“Al­though the ap­praisal drilling cam­paign [Bon­gos-3, Bon­gos-3X, Bon­gos-4] en­coun­tered hy­dro­car­bons, the full re­source de­f­i­n­i­tion, in­clud­ing re­cov­ery fac­tor cal­cu­la­tions and eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty un­der cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tions, is still mar­gin­al to in­con­clu­sive.”

With all these in­to ac­count, he said, in­creas­ing lift­ing and pro­duc­tion costs are be­ing ac­tive­ly trans­lat­ed di­rect­ly to the end-cus­tomers, in­clud­ing key in­dus­tries like petro­chem­i­cal and man­u­fac­tur­ing, as well as the fi­nal con­sumers, con­sti­tut­ing the main rea­son be­hind the sharp in­crease in the over­all en­er­gy and gas costs be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by Trinidad since late 2025 and ear­ly 2026.

“As a con­se­quence, the en­er­gy ser­vices sec­tor re­port­ed a 56 per cent drop in busi­ness vol­ume and val­ue in Q1 of 2026, re­flect­ing re­duced up­stream in­vest­ment, and an in­creas­ing num­ber of mar­gin­al-to-un­eco­nom­i­cal green­field projects. The down­turn is linked to de­creas­ing gas sup­ply, while in­creas­ing en­er­gy costs, im­pact­ing in­dus­try, man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and end costs.”

He al­so re­ferred to at­tempts to re­open Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery.

“Re­cent­ly, the gov­ern­ment an­nounced moves to re­open Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery in phas­es, which could boost down­stream de­mand for gas and oil, nev­er­the­less, that is still in the con­cep­tu­al phase, as re­vamp­ing and reengi­neer­ing costs can make this idea fi­nan­cial­ly un­at­trac­tive.”

Fi­nal­ly, he said un­for­tu­nate­ly pol­i­tics has got in the way of po­ten­tial busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties as in the mean­time, ma­jor Venezue­lan gas projects in­clud­ing Drag­on, have stalled be­cause of the “in­cen­di­ary rhetoric” to­wards Venezuela from the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion, con­tribut­ing to cre­ate ten­sions be­tween both gov­ern­ments, de­rail­ing en­er­gy agree­ments al­ready signed by pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions.

“In sum­ma­ry, Trinidad en­er­gy sec­tor faces chal­lenges from stalled Venezue­lan gas projects, un­der­in­vest­ment, in­creas­ing en­er­gy costs, and a broad­er down­turn in up­stream and down­stream ac­tiv­i­ty. Un­de­ni­ably, re­main­ing oil and gas as­sets on the Trinida­di­an side alone could hard­ly guar­an­tee the en­er­gy sur­vival of the is­land.”