(Trinidad Guardian) T&T’s natural gas woes are expected to continue for at least another four years as the Energy Minister Franklin Khan confirmed that production is unlikely to return to the required four billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) until 2025.
In an extended interview with the Business Guardian, Khan said: “To come back close to 4tcf we will have to wait until 2025 when Manatee is on full stream.”
T&T requires closer to 4.2 bcf/d to meet its installed capacity for electricity, petrochemicals and liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Gas shortages and high gas prices have forced a number of plants at the Point Lisas Industrial Estate to close down and hundreds of workers to lose their jobs.
Khan admitted some of those plants will never re-open saying the older more inefficient plants will not be able to compete in the new environment.
The Energy Minister was candid when he said there remains real problems in the natural gas value chain.
He told Business Guardian, “I will be dishonest if I do not say that the gas industry, in terms of the gas value chain in T&T has challenges. Unlike shale gas in America we cannot get gas at $1 or $2. It is hinged to the same issue I spoke about with small fields, higher unit cost of development. There is the issue of the NGC as the aggregator and there is the issue of the Point Lisas plants and commodity prices.”
Khan sought to defend the increase in natural gas prices saying the upstreamers (bpTT, Royal Dutch Shell, EOG Resources and BHP) made a credible case that they have to have higher gas prices because they will collapse.
“A chain is as strong as its weakest link, without upstream there can be no downstream, without any downstream there also cannot be any upstream, so they have to live in a symbiotic relationship,” the Energy Minister said.
Khan said the days of cheap gas are gone and the time when NGC as the aggregator could charge a margin for gas and make a good profit while the downstream companies also made a good profit and everyone was laughing to the bank, appear to be over.
He said the challenge was to ensure that everyone can make a living without super profits.
