CUR­TIS WILLIAMS

and GEISHA KOW­LESSAR

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has an­nounced that T&T and Venezuela have re­scind­ed their agree­ment to joint­ly ex­ploit 10 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas in the Lo­ran Man­a­tee field and would in­stead de­vel­op it in­de­pen­dent­ly.

In a wide rang­ing ad­dress at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the En­er­gy Cham­ber’s An­nu­al En­er­gy Con­fer­ence be­ing held at the Hy­att Ho­tel in Port of Spain, Dr Row­ley al­so an­nounced yes­ter­day that “it is re­gret­table that we can­not move ahead with the Drag­on Project which is on hold, at this time, due to US sanc­tions on Venezuela.”

He said this coun­try was ready “at a mo­ment’s no­tice,” to move ahead with the project “on the lift­ing of such re­stric­tions since vir­tu­al­ly all the prepara­to­ry work has been done.”

Notwith­stand­ing, this he said “we are pro­ceed­ing with the Man­a­tee ini­tia­tive which is the sin­gle most sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment in the en­er­gy sec­tor in re­cent times.”

Row­ley said the con­tin­ued US sanc­tions on the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic had made it all but im­pos­si­ble to joint­ly de­vel­op the gas and as a re­sult the two coun­tries will go in­de­pen­dent­ly.

As a re­sult, Roy­al Dutch Shell which is the 100 per­cent op­er­a­tor of the Man­a­tee block has agreed to de­vel­op it and has al­ready start­ed plan­ning its de­vel­op­ment.

Row­ley not­ed that this should add be­tween 275 to 400 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of gas by 2024, which he said would be a game chang­er,

He ex­plained that the gas will be in the shal­low wa­ter and should be able to come on stream in few­er than five yeas.

In re­cent years there have been con­cern about de­clin­ing nat­ur­al gas and the im­pact it has had on this coun­try. But the Prime Min­is­ter sound­ed a note of op­ti­mism say­ing he ex­pect­ed by 2024 the nat­ur­al gas short­ages will come to an end. He al­so fore­cast an in­crease in crude pro­duc­tion to 90,000 bar­rels of oil per day by 2022 as BHP brings on its Ru­by project.

PM Row­ley told the con­fer­ence that gas pro­duc­tion is pro­ject­ed to come on stream from Man­a­tee field, which forms a part of the Lo­ran- Man­a­tee cross-bor­der field and is lo­cat­ed in the ma­rine area of T&T.

The Lo­ran-Man­a­tee is a shal­low-wa­ter field that strad­dles the mar­itime bound­ary be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela.

Row­ley said ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ty, ini­tial­ly by state owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and lat­er by US Cor­po­ra­tion Chevron, which holds a 60 per cent in­ter­est, en­coun­tered a sub­stan­tial amount of gas in the Lo­ran field. In 2005 Chevron/BG, which held a joint in­ter­est of 50 per cent each in the Block 6 com­pris­ing Sub-Block 6b and Sub-Block 6d, dis­cov­ered the Man­a­tee field in Block 6d. Chevron sub­se­quent­ly sold its in­ter­est in Block 6 to Shell which now has 100 per cent in­ter­est in the block, the PM added.

“Shell has sanc­tioned this de­vel­op­ment and is cur­rent­ly gear­ing up to build the in­fra­struc­ture to pro­duce from this cross-bor­der field in keep­ing with the sched­ule as just men­tioned,” Row­ley not­ed.

In 2007, T&T and Venezuela ex­e­cut­ed a Frame­work Treaty re­lat­ing to the uni­ti­za­tion of hy­dro­car­bon reser­voirs that ex­tend across the de­lim­i­ta­tion line be­tween the coun­tries.

The Treaty es­tab­lished the gen­er­al frame­work un­der which any cross-bor­der reser­voir would be ex­ploit­ed.

Row­ley al­so not­ed that de­spite the strides made by the Caribbean, in its pen­e­tra­tion of sus­tain­able en­er­gy sources, re­new­able en­er­gy sys­tems ac­count for a small frac­tion of the re­gion’s un­tapped po­ten­tial.

“It is es­ti­mat­ed that the Caribbean holds 2,525 MW of po­ten­tial so­lar en­er­gy, 800 MW of po­ten­tial wind en­er­gy, and 3,770 MW of po­ten­tial ge­ot­her­mal en­er­gy. “

“These re­sources, if har­nessed, would dis­place ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.7 mil­lion bar­rels of oil per year and save Caribbean coun­tries US$5.0 bil­lion in fu­el im­ports per an­num,” Row­ley added.

He said giv­en the po­ten­tial sav­ings Caribbean coun­tries have es­tab­lished am­bi­tious tar­gets in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of re­new­able en­er­gy sys­tems.

In ad­di­tion the PM not­ed that fi­nan­cial aid from donor coun­tries and in­sti­tu­tions, the falling costs of re­new­able en­er­gy tech­nol­o­gy and im­prove­ment in the ef­fi­cien­cy have made these tar­gets some­what achiev­able.

Row­ley said this coun­try, tem­porar­i­ly in­su­lat­ed from high en­er­gy costs by virtue of its hy­dro­car­bon re­sources, has been mea­sured in its ap­proach to re­new­able en­er­gy.

“This in part is to en­sure that cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go are not bur­dened by the trans­for­ma­tion costs on the con­ver­sion to re­new­able en­er­gy sys­tems.”

“ Hav­ing can­celled our at­tempts at eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in the form of man­u­fac­tur­ing of alu­mini­um prod­ucts, we are left, at this time, with sub­stan­tial quan­ti­ty of sur­plus in­stalled pow­er which has to be paid for but for which there is no im­me­di­ate mar­ket,” Row­ley said.

This con­di­tion, he added, makes in­vest­ment in re­new­ables a lit­tle tricky how­ev­er, he said T&T has not giv­en up on the need to join in with this fu­ture prospect.

Row­ley added that Trinidad and To­ba­go is al­so poised to par­tic­i­pate in the ex­ploita­tion of hy­dro­car­bon in the ma­rine ar­eas off the Guyanas.

“Our claim to the Unit­ed Na­tions Com­mis­sion on the Lim­its of the Con­ti­nen­tal Shelf is ex­pect­ed to be pre­sent­ed this year and if suc­cess­ful would ex­tend our mar­itime ju­ris­dic­tion sea­wards to ar­eas in close prox­im­i­ty to the Guyana-Suri­name Basin,” Row­ley added.