PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s per­se­ver­ance with the Lo­ran Man­a­tee field has paved the way for the largest gas pro­duc­tion deal in decades, ac­cord­ing to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

While ad­dress­ing the Sen­ate as the bud­get de­bate con­tin­ued in the Up­per House yes­ter­day, Young re­vealed ma­jor strides had been made in the project.

“I am hap­py to an­nounce here to­day that last week, the Cab­i­net of Trinidad and To­ba­go took a de­ci­sion and gave us a green light to go ahead with the Man­a­tee con­tract.....Lo­ran Man­a­tee is a gas field that strad­dles, Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela. We’ve heard about it since 2010. Noth­ing was done,” said Young.

T&T is de­vel­op­ing its share of the gi­ant Lo­ran/ Man­a­tee field which has 2.7 TCF of gas on the Trinidad side and which in to­tal has 10 tcf with 7.3 tcf on the Venezuela side of the bor­der but could not be joint­ly de­vel­oped due to US sanc­tions against the regime of Nico­las Maduro.

“Let us de­vel­op it. Peo­ple said it couldn’t be done, I am hap­py to say to­day we ne­go­ti­at­ed a PSC with Shell. The Man­a­tee project has, we’ve got any green light to go ahead with the PSC. In a few weeks I’m hop­ing we’ll be able to sign that agree­ment that is go­ing to keep this sin­gle largest new gas pro­duc­tion con­tract, and gas pro­duc­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go for decades,” said the Min­is­ter.

Young said this de­vel­op­ment was fur­ther proof that the En­er­gy Sec­tor would still play a ma­jor part of this coun­try’s econ­o­my go­ing for­ward.

Young ex­plained that while the world was mov­ing away from fos­sil fu­els, there was still a large win­dow for gas based economies as the time­line for the phas­ing out of gas was longer than those of oth­er tra­di­tion­al fos­sil fu­els coal and oil.

 “Don’t let the Chick­en Lit­tle syn­drome that is tak­ing place in some quar­ters that the en­er­gy sec­tor is sud­den­ly go­ing to van­ish from Globe, fright­en any­one,” he said.

Young con­tin­ued, “The first one that is con­tribut­ing to the glob­al en­er­gy warm­ing cri­sis is coal. And that’s the first one that the glob­al en­er­gy sec­tor and de­vel­oped coun­tries are mov­ing away from oil and gas have imag­ined longer Hori­zon. The Hori­zon for oil may be more lim­it­ed”