Trinidad Gov’t reaches new “significant” agreements with BP, Shell

(Trinidad Guardian) Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has an­nounced that the gov­ern­ment has reached an agree­ment with BP and Shell that he says with bring “sig­nif­i­cant” fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The agree­ment in­volves new pric­ing arrange­ments, the ex­ten­sion of the At­lantic LNG Train 1 by a fur­ther five years, and the abil­i­ty of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to ex­port lique­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) on be­half of T&T.

The min­is­ter made the an­nounce­ments as he ad­dressed yester­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence.

Min­is­ter Young said the dis­cus­sions start­ed in April 2018 when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley led a del­e­ga­tion to the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) in Lon­don.

While there, the team, which in­clude Min­is­ter Young and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Franklin Khan, met with ex­ec­u­tives of Shell and BP.

Out of that meet­ing, all three par­ties agreed to ap­point em­pow­ered ne­go­ti­at­ing teams to sit and ne­go­ti­ate terms of con­tracts go­ing for­ward.

“I am hap­py to say that af­ter months of very in­tense and ag­gres­sive ne­go­ti­a­tions, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T has reached an agree­ment with Bp and al­so with Shell,” Min­is­ter Young said.

At­lantic LNG’s Train 1 was due to end op­er­a­tions in April 2019 but the min­is­ter now says it will con­tin­ue at least un­til 2024.

An LNG train is a liq­ue­fac­tion and pu­rifi­ca­tion fa­cil­i­ty. It con­dens­es gas in­to a liq­uid state.

At­lantic LNG has four trains in its Point Fortin plant.

The con­ti­n­u­a­tion of the train will al­low for the con­tin­u­a­tion of jobs and fur­ther pro­duc­tion of liqui­fied nat­ur­al gas for ex­port and for sale to NGC.

NGC, BP and Shell are among the share­hold­ers of Train 1.

The min­is­ter told the me­dia that he couldn’t dis­close the new pric­ing for­mu­la agreed to by the en­er­gy com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ment, but says the new for­mu­la “sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hances the rev­enue for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go”.

He said this will al­so be the first time that the NGC will have the abil­i­ty to sell LNG car­goes of LNG on be­half of T&T.

“That is a ma­jor achieve­ment that we did not have be­fore,” Young said.

The min­is­ter said that the agree­ments were on­ly con­clud­ed yes­ter­day and that more de­tails will be re­vealed in time.