Following the recent signing of a deal between
Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), The National Gas Company of
Trinidad and Tobago Ltd (NGC) and Shell that will allow for
Trinidad and Tobago to process natural gas from the offshore
Dragon field in Venezuela,
Adrian Lara, Senior
Oil and Gas Analyst at
GlobalData, a
leading data and analytics company, offers his view on the impact
on the upstream sector:
“In a way Shell has probably benefited the most from
the troubled situation in both countries. As operator of both
fields, Dragon in Venezuela and Hibiscus in Trinidad and Tobago
(T&T), the company is now in a position of strengthening its
complete Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) value chain in Trinidad. In
fact they are also involved in developing a plan to move gas from
the Loran-Manatee field located across the maritime
border.
‘‘Obviously the deal is also quite important for both
countries because Venezuela desperately needs additional sources
of revenue and T&T has had trouble in supplying enough gas to
their LNG and petrochemical plants. Somehow Venezuela’s need for
cash made this deal possible more quickly. Actually now, even the
Loran-Manatee gas field, a cross-border asset and one on which
the two governments have been trying to agree for years on how to
develop jointly, is looking plausible.
“What is also interesting is that two other fields
nearby the Dragon field, Mejillones and Patao, have been awarded
to the Russian gas company Rosneft with the right to export the
production as gas or LNG. Regardless of what the development
strategy is for exporting the production, having takeaway
capacity installed to move it to T&T can add a positive
dynamic to these undeveloped gas offshore fields.”
