An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

As the 2024 En­er­gy Con­fer­ence be­gins to­mor­row, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is hope­ful that those in at­ten­dance use it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to have pro­duc­tive and pro­gres­sive con­ver­sa­tions about how en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty can be en­hanced go­ing for­ward in a very volatile glob­al en­vi­ron­ment.  

Young told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that there is a lot of good news and achieve­ments with­in the sec­tor and the fo­cus should be on keep­ing the in­dus­try go­ing in the short term un­til the big medi­um-term projects kick in.

Crime is a ma­jor talk­ing point, es­pe­cial­ly among the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, some of whom are anx­ious to know whether en­er­gy in­vestors have ex­pressed con­cerns about this is­sue.

Que­sioned about this, Young said, “No en­er­gy com­pa­ny has raised it with me. We in the gov­ern­ment are con­cerned and fo­cused on work­ing with law en­force­ment to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion.”

Achieve­ments  

Look­ing at the achieve­ments for 2023 the min­is­ter said the fu­ture of the en­er­gy sec­tor is much brighter af­ter the ac­qui­si­tion of a li­cence to pro­cure and pro­duce nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Gas Field and suc­cess­ful on­shore/nearshore bid rounds.

Young said that in 2023 things be­gan to come to­geth­er for the coun­try with the Gov­ern­ment ob­tain­ing a li­cence in Jan­u­ary 2023 from the US Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) of that coun­try’s Trea­sury De­part­ment to pur­sue the de­vel­op­ment of the Venezue­lan Drag­on gas field.

This, he in­di­cat­ed, in­volved in­tense and com­plex ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment (these had nev­er stopped) to ob­tain the li­cence to de­vel­op and ex­port the nat­ur­al gas in the Drag­on field.

“We ob­tained a sig­nif­i­cant amend­ment to the OFAC li­cence in Oc­to­ber 2023 and on De­cem­ber 21, se­cured a 30-year li­cence from the Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela to ex­plore, de­vel­op and ex­port nat­ur­al gas from Drag­on to Trinidad and To­ba­go. This is his­toric and un­prece­dent­ed. We have agreed on gas al­lo­ca­tion, roy­al­ties, and pric­ing among many terms and con­di­tions,” the min­is­ter high­light­ed.

The US$1 bil­lion deal with Venezuela in­volves the pur­chase of nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Gas Field and the trans­porta­tion of the nat­ur­al gas to the Hi­bis­cus plat­form via a 17km pipeline. The deal is a part­ner­ship be­tween T&T’s whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, Roy­al Dutch Shell, and Venezue­lan state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny, PDVSA.

Young al­so not­ed the com­ple­tion of the un­prece­dent­ed re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG in De­cem­ber 2023, which has nev­er been done any­where else in the world. The re­struc­tur­ing opens up new pos­si­bil­i­ties and hori­zons for fu­ture in­vest­ments in T&T in­clud­ing across-bor­der nat­ur­al gas and deep­wa­ter gas as one of the terms. This is be­cause one of the terms T&T ne­go­ti­at­ed was third par­ty ac­cess to At­lantic LNG via tolling arrange­ments.  

“We have se­cured high­er share­hold­ing, high­er rev­enue streams, and new com­mer­cial arrange­ments in this re­struc­tur­ing. We al­so com­plet­ed suc­cess­ful on­shore/nearshore bid rounds and signed li­cences for three deep­wa­ter blocks with bp and Shell. These will pro­vide fu­ture de­vel­op­ment in oil and gas,” Young said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the min­is­ter men­tioned that the Pro­duc­tion Shar­ing Con­tract (PSC) for Man­a­tee Gas Filed was ne­go­ti­at­ed and ex­e­cut­ed be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Shell in or around ear­ly 2022.  

Shell has been pro­ceed­ing with the work and plans to de­vel­op Man­a­tee. At the end of 2023, Shell award­ed De­sign/FEED en­gi­neer­ing con­tracts for Man­a­tee to Eni and Mc­Der­mott In­ter­na­tion­al.

High­light­ing oth­er achieve­ments, he said Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny hired a new CEO and the Gov­ern­ment has al­ready seen suc­cess in in­creased oil pro­duc­tion tak­ing place.

“Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um is work­ing to in­crease oil pro­duc­tion and has sev­er­al ini­tia­tives cur­rent­ly be­ing de­ployed. I have al­so asked them to work clos­er with in­de­pen­dent pro­duc­ers who are will­ing to ex­plore and pro­duce by giv­ing them ac­cess to wells acreage,” he said.

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to NGC, Young dis­closed that the com­pa­ny com­plet­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions of up­stream gas sup­ply con­tracts and all of its down­stream gas sale con­tracts.  

“We al­so com­plet­ed suc­cess­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions of all claims made against NGC as a re­sult of its mis­man­age­ment be­tween 2010 and 2015. We ne­go­ti­at­ed over $8 bil­lion in claims all from 2010 to 2015 and en­sured that NGC con­tracts no longer ex­pose it to such claims for cur­tail­ment,” he de­tailed.

Asked whether the Gov­ern­ment worked out arrange­ments with NGC own­ing a stake in the pipeline from the Drag­on gas field, Young said NGC will have an eq­ui­ty stake in the Drag­on Gas Field and the gov­ern­ment ne­go­ti­at­ed that the li­cence from Venezuela for the nat­ur­al gas field is to both NGC and Shell.

Hy­dro­gen project  

Asked about the hy­dro­gen project be­ing pro­mot­ed by Ke­nes­jay Green (KGL), Young said Cab­i­net ap­proved the pur­suit of a green hy­dro­gen pi­lot project to be dri­ven by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.  

“We are cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing sev­er­al op­tions con­cern­ing the project, in­clud­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, the re­new­able en­er­gy el­e­ment of the project and we are de­ter­min­ing the quick­est method­ol­o­gy to have the project com­plet­ed and com­mis­sioned. We are de­ter­mined to pur­sue and com­mis­sion this pi­lot project in the short­est pos­si­ble time frame,” he de­tailed.

Last  April, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley turned the sod for the con­struc­tion of a 112 megawatt (MWac) so­lar project in Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca.

In March, the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment com­menced con­struc­tion of a so­lar farm at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Over an area of 1.54 hectares, the in­stal­la­tion of 25 tonnes of pho­to­volta­ic (PV) ground-mount­ed struc­tures, 960 PV mod­ules, a trans­former, and high volt­age ca­bles is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate 1,443,830 kilo­watt-hours an­nu­al­ly. This is a project in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank.

At that launch, Young said TT was well-poised and had the ad­van­tage of be­ing a glob­al leader in the en­er­gy sec­tor through the pro­duc­tion of blue and green hy­dro­gen.

In De­cem­ber, Re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate ANSA McAL signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MoU) with KGL to de­vel­op green en­er­gy projects in the Caribbean re­gion.

The deal was signed be­tween An­tho­ny N. Sab­ga, group CEO of ANSA McAL, and Philip Julien, founder, chair­man, and CEO of KGL at COP28 in Dubai.

KGL is cur­rent­ly work­ing on build­ing the USD 350-mil­lion Point Lisas New­Gen green hy­dro­gen project that in­volves cut­ting down the car­bon foot­print of Trinidad Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny’s am­mo­nia com­plex and sup­ply­ing hy­dro­gen to the Pointe Lisas es­tate.