Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says de­spite the lack of a gas to sup­ply At­lantic LNG’s Train 1 project, it is not yet dead and the Gov­ern­ment is still hold­ing out hope that it will be re­an­i­mat­ed. How­ev­er, a fi­nal de­ci­sion on its fu­ture will come by the end of March next year.

Row­ley made the com­ment as he up­dat­ed the coun­try on what tran­spired dur­ing his at­ten­dance at the re­cent Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (COP26) in Glas­gow, Scot­land and en­er­gy meet­ings with Shell and BP in the UK.

Ad­dress­ing Train 1 specif­i­cal­ly dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on his re­turn from the UK on Sat­ur­day night, Row­ley said the re­struc­tur­ing of the arrange­ment was one of the key top­ics dis­cussed with the en­er­gy com­pa­nies.

“It is not for the Gov­ern­ment to just walk out of a sit­u­a­tion on Train 1. Train 1 is in­te­gral­ly con­nect­ed to Trains 2, 3 and 4 and it’s not that we own the busi­ness, we are on­ly a ten per cent own­er but as a coun­try, we have a much larg­er in­ter­est than ten per cent so we would be the last per­son to walk away from the ta­ble on Train 1 but in the dis­cus­sions that we have been hav­ing, we as a Gov­ern­ment would have done and we con­tin­ue to give hope for the breath­ing of life in­to Train 1 un­til the doc­tor says it’s dead,” Row­ley said.

“I think the doc­tor is putting on his coat right now and we had the kind of dis­cus­sions where, with BP and Shell, par­tic­u­lar­ly with BP, the largest gas pro­duc­er, where, … ini­tial­ly we re­lied, Gov­ern­ment re­lied, when we ex­tend­ed the life of Train 1 for five years and BP was en­gaged in an in­field drilling pro­gramme, we an­tic­i­pat­ed a pos­i­tive out­turn. As fate would have it, BP drilled a num­ber of dry holes and had to, in the end, con­firm that we don’t have the gas for Train 1.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said as a 10 per cent share­hold­er in the Train 1 project, T&T had to spend some mon­ey to keep its op­tions open but now the dis­cus­sion was more about how to sal­vage the projects go­ing for­ward.

“We spent, I think it is about 33 mil­lion US dol­lars to keep the Train 1 op­tion open, not on­ly for ne­go­ti­a­tion pur­pos­es but al­so for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that if gas was avail­able that we would con­tin­ue. I think we can now con­clude that the gas is not there be­cause BP has not been suc­cess­ful,” the PM said.

“What we dis­cussed is what BP is go­ing to do go­ing for­ward in terms of in­vest­ing and again keep con­tin­u­ing to try to find more gas in the Colum­bus Basin and else­where. ... so that be­ing so, the share­hold­ers of Train 1 now have and we have agreed that by the end of the first quar­ter of 2022, we will take a de­fin­i­tive de­ci­sion on how we to­geth­er do what has to be done about Train 1 and at­tempt to con­clude the re­struc­tur­ing of Trains 2, 3 and 4 where all the share­hold­ers will have their in­ter­est well served in a re­struc­tured arrange­ment of the 2, 3 and 4 trains. So that is well un­der­way and that was part of our dis­cus­sions.”

Just last month, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that af­ter spend­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on an at­tempt to save At­lantic LNG Train 1, the state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) had uni­lat­er­al­ly walked away from its agree­ment to fund the main­te­nance of At­lantic LNG, in the process cre­at­ing a cri­sis for the rest of the share­hold­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to the Guardian Me­dia re­ports, by De­cem­ber 3, 2020, bpTT had writ­ten to the NGC ad­vis­ing the state-owned com­pa­ny that it (bpTT) would not be de­liv­er­ing its full dai­ly con­tract­ed quan­ti­ties (DCQ) for the con­tract year 2021. bpTT fur­ther ad­vised NGC that it (NGC) should take this in­to con­sid­er­a­tion be­fore mak­ing any de­ci­sion to in­vest in Train 1.

Guardian Me­dia had ac­cess to a pletho­ra of doc­u­ments and based on mul­ti­ple sourc­ing, con­firmed that NGC—led by its pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan—was con­vinced that it could pro­cure the re­quired gas for Train 1 and ad­vised the board and the Gov­ern­ment to pur­sue the uni­lat­er­al fund­ing of the Train 1 Turn­around (up­grade) and to fund the main­te­nance of the Train 1 op­er­a­tions

Train 1 first came in­to op­er­a­tions in Point Fortin back in March 1999 and pro­duced LNG for the first time a month lat­er, paving the way for the lu­cra­tive LNG in­dus­try in the en­er­gy sec­tor. Since then, At­lantic has built three more LNG plants, called in the sec­tor “trains,” along the South West­ern Penin­su­la.

How­ev­er, over the past three years, the con­tin­ued op­er­a­tion of Train 1, as well as the preser­va­tion of jobs at­tached to it, have come in­to fo­cus.

In No­vem­ber 2018, Gov­ern­ment had an­nounced plans to ex­tend Train 1 for five more years be­yond its 20-year life, which would have come to an end in April 2019.

Con­cern over the fu­ture op­er­a­tions of Train 1 in­ten­si­fied 2019, when bpTT could not as­sure a con­tin­ued gas sup­ply to the train. How­ev­er, amid con­cerns raised then, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert as­sured that op­er­a­tions would con­tin­ue.

In De­cem­ber 2020, late Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Franklin Khan al­so gave as­sur­ances that Train 1 would not be moth­balled at the start of this year.

In his con­tri­bu­tion be­fore the Par­lia­ment at that time, Khan said, “Train 1 will con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in 2021 and will be part of wider ne­go­ti­a­tions, which have been tak­ing place among the At­lantic LNG share­hold­ers to form one uni­tised fa­cil­i­ty en­com­pass­ing all four trains.”

Khan said then that NGC would fa­cil­i­tate a turn­around of At­lantic Train 1 and would keep it in “op­er­a­tions ready mode” for all of 2021 in­to 2022.