Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has an­nounced that Trinidad and To­ba­go 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.

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.

With this in mind, Roy­al Dutch Shell—who is the 100 per­cent op­er­a­tor of the Man­a­tee block—has agreed to de­vel­op it and al­ready has start­ed plan­ning its de­vel­op­ment.

Row­ley not­ed that this should add rough­ly 275 to 400 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of gas by 2024, and be a game chang­er,

The gas will be in the shal­low wa­ter and should be able to come on stream in few­er than five years.

In a wide rang­ing ad­dress at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the En­er­gy Cham­ber's An­nu­al En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, Row­ley said he ex­pect­ed the nat­ur­al gas short­ages to come to an end by 2024. He al­so pre­dict­ed an in­crease in crude pro­duc­tion to 90,000 bar­rels of oil per day by 2022 as BHP brings on its Ru­by project.

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Sto­ry by CUR­TIS WILLIAMS