Prime Ministers Patrick Manning of Trinidad and Portia Simpson Miller of Jamaica at a CARICOM trade meeting held in Montego Bay, February 5-6. Manning has recommitted Trinidad to its LNG agreement with Jamaica. - Photo by Noel Thompson

Linda Hutchinson-Jafar, Business Writer

ORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad: Trinidad and Tobago, facing increasing demands for natural gas for several new domestic industries and for export in its liquified form, LNG, is banking on a formal cross border agreement with Venezuela to go after resources that straddle their maritime border.

Supplying Jamaica remains the twin-island's most immediate challenge.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning, who just last week recommitted to the agreement to supply Kingston with 160 million cubic feet of LNG per day starting 2009, said one possible area for emerging gas is the shared Trinidad-Venezuela sea border.

The two countries appear ready to sign off on a final agreement on how to share oil and gas resources.

"One does not expect a long interval between the referral by the steering committee to the two governments and the signatures by the representatives of the two governments," said Gerald Thompson, head of the legal department of the Foreign Ministry in Port-of-Spain and co-chair of the steering committee at an energy conference in the capital last week.

The initialled documents in both English and Spanish have gone to the respective energy ministries for final signature.

A key deliberation of the steering committee was the determination of the size of the Loran/Manatee and Kapok/Dorado fields, and the respective allocations for the two neighbouring countries.

Final reports on the overall volume of reserves of the fields, which were undisclosed, have already been presented to the two governments.

Last week, the Energy Minister Dr. Lenny Saith said Port of Spain was about to take the first steps towards deciding whether the country could accommodate a new LNG project called Train X by having a feasibility study done.

The study is to be completed by December.

"We have already signalled that now that we have partially satisfied domestic gas demand, our intention is to consider the possibility of another LNG train - Train X," said Saith.

"Government is about to take the first concrete steps towards the realisation of that objective via the conduct of a feasibility study."

Trinidad and Tobago's state-owned National Gas Company (NGC) recently concluded negotiations with upstream producers, BHP Billiton consortium, EOG Resources and BG/Chevron, for the supply of 550 million standard cubic feet of natural gas per day (mmscf/d) to be utilised by petrochemical, metal and other industrial plants scheduled to come on stream between 2009 and 2010.

"Our LNG expansion is likely to see new entrants and partnerships on the liquefaction side of the business as well as increased government participation in shipping, regasification and marketing while at the same time allocating a portion of the gas for domestic use, " Saith said.

Trinidad has said in the past that it was considering new upstream shareholders in 'Train X', who do not already hold equity in home-based Atlantic LNG, the leading LNG supplier to the United States.

Current shareholders in Atlantic LNG, formed in July 1995, are NGC and four international companies - BP, BG, Repsol, and Cabot whose stake has now been acquired by Suez, formerly known as Tractebel.

Atlantic LNG, which also exports to Spain, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic has four processing trains which have a combined capacity close to 15 million tonnes per year

It processes about 60 per cent of the country's overall natural gas production for export markets.

business@gleanerjm.com