The Venezuela gov­ern­ment has award­ed an ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cence for Phase 2 of the Lo­ran field in the Platafor­ma Deltana area, in a move that is ex­pect­ed to ad­vance gas de­vel­op­ment off­shore T&T.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, BP said Lo­ran Phase 2, which is lo­cat­ed in the Colum­bus Basin off Trinidad's south east coast, con­tains an es­ti­mat­ed 4 tril­lion cu­bic feet of re­cov­er­able gas re­sources.

BP was grant­ed the li­cence for Lo­ran Phase 2 in part­ner­ship with XRG, the in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy in­vest­ment arm of the Abu Dhabi Na­tion­al Oil Com­pa­ny, and Qatar-based UCC Oil and Gas Hold­ing LLC. Each par­ty holds an equal work­ing in­ter­est share in the nat­ur­al gas field, which will be op­er­at­ed by BP.

Meg O'Neill, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of BP, said: "The award of the Lo­ran Phase 2 li­cence is an im­por­tant step for­ward. It builds on the strong col­lab­o­ra­tion we have es­tab­lished with the Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela and our part­ners and re­flects the progress we have made to­geth­er.

"BP has a long-stand­ing pres­ence in the re­gion and deep ex­pe­ri­ence de­vel­op­ing ma­jor gas re­sources. To­geth­er, these agree­ments pro­vide a strong foun­da­tion to progress Venezuela's off­shore gas po­ten­tial and un­lock the next phase of de­vel­op­ment."

The li­cence fol­lows the mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing signed by BP and the Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela in April 2026, which es­tab­lished a frame­work for co­op­er­a­tion in ex­plo­ration and fu­ture de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in the Platafor­ma Deltana area, in­clud­ing the Lo­ran off­shore gas field.

BP and the Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela al­so signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing cov­er­ing the Carú­pano East Block in the Cara­col­i­to sub-basin of the Mariscal Su­cre mar­itime area. This agree­ment es­tab­lish­es a frame­work for eval­u­at­ing ex­plo­ration op­por­tu­ni­ties and ad­vanc­ing dis­cus­sions on po­ten­tial fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of the off­shore area.

The agree­ments were fi­nalised dur­ing an of­fi­cial vis­it to Venezuela by O'Neill and BP's se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean David Camp­bell.