A breakdown of Rowley's trip
ENERGY talks began in Zurich (Switzerland) with executives of Proman, which owns and operates 14 petrochemical plants in Trinidad and employs over 1, 100 people locally.
The PM said discussions surrounded future exploration and production of natural gas to provide feedstock for the plants in T&T, new developments, investments they are making in shipping and the possibility and potential for Proman to use methanol as a fuel for ships and for T&T to be a major refuelling point on the global transportation routes.
He said also discussed were opportunities for T&T to access financing for new projects, including new technologies and green financing in the energy sector and the possibility of alternative energy generation and storage.
He said at Proman's Düsseldorf offices in Germany, their executives from Zurich, Germany, Italy and Portugal made presentations focused on Proman's experience across the full value chain from project development and finance, natural gas production, petrochemical production to marketing, logistics and distribution.
'There was discussion about the opportunity to deploy some of these resources in Trinidad and Tobago in future investments that would maintain and even expand our energy sector,' Rowley stated.
Rowley said the T&T delegation then moved on to London, where they met with BP executives at their headquarters at St James Square.
BP is the largest producer of natural gas in T&T and is critical to this country's energy sector, he said.
He said discussions surrounded BP's operations in T&T, their continued investment here and future plans, including the restructuring of Atlantic LNG and projects that will now be sanctioned for future gas production in T&T.
'You will hear more on that in the coming days directly from BP,' Rowley said.
He said BP reiterated its commitment to investing in T&T and continuing to work closely with the Government to deliver value for citizens.
He said as a direct result of the Government's interventions and high-level discussions with BP's leadership since 2015, in particular negotiations since 2018, BP has invested US$7 billion in projects from 2015 to 2022, while ongoing negotiations have yielded over US$1.2 billion in value added payments to the treasury between 2018 to present.
'Importantly it was emphasised that BP should do future fabrication for its T&T and Tobago projects in T&T and that the Government would work with BP and the local industry to make this happen. We also discussed the current gas production challenges and plans for future gas production to sustain current levels as well as the pathways towards increased production,' Rowley reported.
As to in-depth meetings with Shell in The Hague, he said the Government's team was provided with an update on Shell's current T&T natural gas production, which is its highest levels since Shell re-entered T&T in 2016 (approximately 850 mmscf/d).
'We discussed the future gas production outlook, including Manatee which will be the largest investment in gas production in T&T in a decade. Importantly we also discussed the restructuring of Atlantic LNG and agreed to a new timetable to completing this soon. The restructuring of Atlantic LNG is setting a precedent globally as this has never been done before, that is, the restructuring of LNG trains between private shareholders and a Government. It is expected that when the terms are finally agreed that Trinidad and Tobago would derive significant benefits in areas like shareholding, structure and pricing,' Rowley said.
With respect to the exploration for oil, Rowley said Shell committed to assisting Heritage Petroleum in terms of improved seismic interpretations on the Soldado Field, in order to bring about improved drilling completions and success as T&T seeks to extract more oil from that field.
