Whol­ly state-owned, Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) yes­ter­day de­scribed this week’s agree­ment for the ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas in the Cocuina cross-bor­der field would fur­ther ex­pand the com­pa­ny’s up­stream busi­ness port­fo­lio, strength­en its strate­gic in­ten­tion to be an in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy com­pa­ny grow­ing lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly along the en­er­gy val­ue chain.

Venezuela grant­ed NGC a li­cence for its role in the de­vel­op­ment of Cocuina. The com­pa­ny said the li­cence re­in­forces the en­er­gy re­la­tions be­tween T&T and Venezuela, al­low­ing for fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of oth­er cross- and across-bor­der gas re­serves be­tween the two coun­tries.

Com­ment­ing on the new li­cence, act­ing Pres­i­dent of NGC Ver­li­er Quan Vie, stat­ed: “NGC wel­comes this de­vel­op­ment as a con­tin­u­a­tion of ef­forts to ex­port nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela to T&T.

“We see this as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the on­go­ing en­gage­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion with Venezuela. We wish to thank the teams at MEEI, MPPP, bp and the NGC teams for their un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion as we pur­sued this mile­stone. We are ex­cit­ed to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with all the par­ties to progress this and oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties for the ben­e­fit of the cit­i­zens of T&T.”

NGC said the li­cence for the de­vel­op­ment of the Cocuina field was the sec­ond up­stream li­cence signed by NGC E&P in Venezuela, fol­low­ing the Drag­on Field E&P li­cence, which was signed on De­cem­ber 21, 2023 and pub­lished in the Of­fi­cial Gazette of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela on Jan­u­ary 29, 2024.

The grant­i­ng of the Cocuina E&P li­cense will now en­able the joint de­vel­op­ment of the cross-bor­der Cocuina–Man­akin gas field, one of three cross-bor­der reser­voir fields that strad­dle the mar­itime (in­ter­na­tion­al) bor­der be­tween T&T and Venezuela. The oth­er two are the Lo­ran/Man­a­tee and Kapok/Do­ra­do fields.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the nat­ur­al gas agree­ments that were signed on Wednes­day, bpTT on Thurs­day hailed Venezuela’s award­ing of an ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cence for the Cocuina gas field as an im­por­tant mile­stone.

The li­cence was grant­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela to bpTT and the NGC on Wednes­day.

In a re­lease on Thurs­day, bpTT pres­i­dent David Camp­bell, said: “The award of this li­cence for the Cocuina field is an im­por­tant mile­stone for T&T and for bp. It will al­low us to move for­ward with our plan­ning for the de­vel­op­ment of these sig­nif­i­cant dis­cov­ered re­sources as we work to­wards bring­ing more gas in­to T&T’s ex­ist­ing gas in­fra­struc­ture in this decade.

“The award of the li­cence would not have been pos­si­ble with­out the sig­nif­i­cant diplo­mat­ic ef­forts by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T and its lead­er­ship in dri­ving strong col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween bp, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and the gov­ern­ments of T&T and Venezuela.”

Camp­bell was in Cara­cas, Venezuela on Wednes­day, when he and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young signed the doc­u­ments along­side Venezuela Oil Min­is­ter Pe­dro Tel­lechea to fi­nalise the arrange­ment, with Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro present to bear wit­ness.

In the re­lease, bpTT ex­plained Cocuina is part of the cross-bor­der Man­akin-Cocuina gas field, in which it holds a work­ing in­ter­est as it op­er­ates the Man­akin field, which sits on the Trinidad side of the mar­itime bor­der.

The en­er­gy com­pa­ny said, “Hold­ing li­cences and op­er­a­tor­ship for both the Man­akin and Cocuina gas fields sim­pli­fies the joint de­vel­op­ment plan and will en­able bpTT to fo­cus on ef­fi­cient­ly de­vel­op­ing gas re­sources from the uni­tised field, ty­ing back to ex­ist­ing gas in­fra­struc­ture in Trinidad.”

The En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T al­so hailed “the very pos­i­tive news on the sign­ing of a li­cence for bpTT and NGC to de­vel­op the Cocuina gas field in Venezuela’s Platafor­ma Deltana mar­itime area.”

In a re­lease on Thurs­day, the Cham­ber said, “The En­er­gy Cham­ber con­grat­u­lates the teams from bpTT, NGC and the Gov­ern­ment of T&T in com­plet­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tions for these li­cences.”

The Cham­ber al­so ac­knowl­edged that once the field is de­vel­oped, “this cross-bor­der field can pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant vol­umes of nat­ur­al gas to the LNG and petro­chem­i­cal sec­tors in T&T and help ex­tend the life of our gas in­dus­try and cre­ate busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties and jobs for our cit­i­zens.”