BP has agreed to sell a 20% stake in the Trinidad and Tobago portion of the cross-border Cocuina-Manakin natural gasfield to state-owned National Gas Company (NGC), Reuters reported on Monday.
The Cocuina-Manakin gasfield contains 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves and straddles the maritime boundary between Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela, with 66% of the field on the Trinidad and Tobago side.
NGC already holds a 20% stake in the Cocuina portion on the Venezuelan side. The transaction, signed on Monday, follows Venezuela’s decision less than four months ago to grant BP a licence to develop the field.
“We have a strategy to get a stake in the upstream in most of the gas projects so we can be a producer of gas and be able to sell it on to the users at a reasonable price,” NGC chairman Gerald Ramdeen said to Reuters.
BP and NGC have agreed to market 70% of the project’s gas to Atlantic LNG, while the remaining 30% will be used in petrochemicals. Atlantic LNG has faced declining domestic natural gas supplies that have constrained production and forced the closure of one of its four trains.
BP’s portfolio in Trinidad and Tobago is focused on offshore natural gas production for the domestic market and LNG exports. NGC is a state-owned integrated natural gas company whose core activities include purchasing, transporting, distributing and selling gas in Trinidad and Tobago, while its investments extend into upstream production, LNG, NGLs and international energy activities.