BP Partners With Venezuela on Trinidad Gas Field

BP and Venezuela are jointly discussing the development of a gas field in Trinidad and Tobago, which the island nation shares with Venezuela.

"BP can confirm that it is in discussions with the government of Trinidad and Tobago and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela on the potential development of gas resources in the Manakin-Cocuina field," the supermajor said in a statement cited by Reuters.

Venezuela’s PDVSA, for its part, said it was going to issue a license for the exploration and development of the Venezuelan part of the field.

BP has interests in two blocks in the waters off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago. Manakin-Cocuina is one and the other is the Manatee block. Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, last year urged BP and project partner Chevron to resume exploration work at the Manatee field after years of inaction amid a shortage of cash and lack of investment clarity.

While the Manakin-Cocuina field is estimated to contain some 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the Manatee field could hold as much as eight times that. For BP, this would be a welcome source of new gas amid falling production right when demand is going up.

Per Reuters, BP’s gas output has gone down from 1.2 billion cu ft daily to 1.2 billion cu ft over the past five years. The gas that could be extracted from the Trinidad/Venezuela field would be fed into the supermajor’s Atlantic LNG facility in Trinidad and Tobago.

The facility, which is the largest LNG plant in Latin America, has been operating at less than capacity due to lower gas output at the island’s offshore gas fields, Reuters reported in December last year. Atlantic LNG has a nameplate capacity of 15 million tons of liquefied gas annually, produced in four trains. Its first train, however, has been idled since 2020, so last year’s output of the plant was just 8.2 million tons.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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