PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) of the US Trea­sury De­part­ment at US Trea­sury has grant­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go a li­cence to ex­plore a nat­ur­al gas field that strad­dles the mar­itime bor­der be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

At a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the Gov­ern­ment re­ceived the li­cence to be­gin work in the Cocuina-Man­akin hy­dro­car­bon field on Tues­day. The field is lo­cat­ed off south-east coast of Trinidad.

"Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­ceived a spe­cif­ic li­cence from the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment OFAC for the pur­suit of ex­plo­ration, pro­duc­tion and ex­port of gas from the Cocuina-Man­akin field to Trinidad and To­ba­go and the terms are sim­i­lar to Drag­on, so we can pay in fi­at cur­ren­cy or US cur­ren­cy etc. In oth­er words, they have giv­en us the go ahead. Im­por­tant­ly, the li­cence is for two years and ex­pires on the 31st of May 2026," said Young, at the Min­istry's of­fices at Tow­er D of the Port of Spain Wa­ter­front.

Young said the news was con­trary to a nar­ra­tive be­ing spun by sev­er­al "nay-say­ers" who were in­tent on paint­ing a neg­a­tive out­look for the en­er­gy sec­tor.

"We are now found our­selves with an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty with more eggs in an­oth­er bas­ket for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. These will not man­i­fest them­selves overnight. As we've learnt in the en­er­gy sec­tor, it will take time. We have al­ready set the prece­dent.

"So I ex­pect the teams to im­me­di­ate­ly con­tin­ue our en­gage­ment, we at the Min­istry of En­er­gy nev­er stopped. So when I see peo­ple writ­ing these sto­ries with on­ly doom and gloom that BP is out of Cocuina-Man­akin and will go nowhere. It is very dif­fi­cult at times not to re­spond but one must of­ten keep a still tongue," said Young.

This is the sec­ond such li­cence T&T has re­ceived from OFAC fol­low­ing the is­suance of a sim­i­lar per­mis­sion in Jan­u­ary 2023 to al­low for work in Drag­on Gas field.

Young could not give a de­fin­i­tive an­swer as to when pro­duc­tion would be­gin in the Drag­on Gas field, but he did state that Shell should have an an­nounce­ment con­cern­ing the Lo­ran/Man­a­tee field soon.

"Every­thing that has to be ne­go­ti­at­ed has been com­plet­ed. That will be sig­nif­i­cant for pro­duc­tion. You mar­ry that with Drag­on which they're run­ning a com­pe­ti­tion to see which can be brought in first by Shell be­tween Man­a­tee and Drag­on. Hope­ful­ly both will come in around the same time. That is go­ing to boost our pro­duc­tion," said Young.

He said nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion lev­els were not high cur­rent­ly, but should re­bound in the next two or three years.

He said," I've said con­tin­u­ous­ly, we don't hide it. Pro­duc­tion is go­ing to be a strug­gle. We're in that pe­ri­od right now.We're about 2.6 2.7 BCF of gas a day but it is go­ing to go up with all of these (fields) from 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030."