Caribbean & Central America - April 2025

Trinidad & Tobago’s Prime Minister Stuart Young announced this month that the US had revoked special licences for the development of two offshore natural gas projects between Trinidad & Tobago and Venezuela: Dragon, which was being developed by British multinational oil firm Shell and Trinidad’s state-owned Natural Gas Company (NGC), and Cocuina-Manakin, which was being developed by NGC and British multinational BP.

The projects are in Venezuelan waters, very close to the maritime border with Trinidad & Tobago. Developing the Dragon field in particular, (which has an estimated 4tn cubic feet [tcf] of gas reserves, compared with an estimated 1tcf for Cocuina-Manakin), would have solved a big problem for the Trinidad government: the existing Atlantic liquified natural gas (LNG) project is running out of gas to liquefy. Last year Atlantic, a partnership between Shell, BP, and NGC, produced 8.5m tonnes of gas, 4m less than its installed capacity according to figures from UK-headquartered London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), a global financial data provider, cited in a 20 March Reuters report.

Earlier in March, BP had said it was planning to decommission the first production train at Atlantic, which has been idle since 2020, because of a lack of sufficient feedstock. On paper at least the Dragon field could have solved that problem many times over, providing the natural gas needed to boost Atlantic LNG output.

Both Trinidad & Tobago and Venezuela had been eager for the projects to go ahead. In December 2023 NGC announced the signing of the licence relating to the Dragon field between NGC, Shell, and Venezuela’s oil ministry while in July 2024 it announced the signing of a similar licence with BP relating to the Cocuina-Manakin gas fields. Under the previous US government led by former president Joe Biden (2021-2025), the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) had granted special licences to the companies, allowing them to operate despite US sanctions against Venezuela.

However, on 9 April Young confirmed Ofac’s decision to revoke the licences, which comes as a major blow to the government. It was hardly a surprise given similar measures taken by the current US administration led by President Donald Trump against other oil companies operating in Venezuela such as US oil firm Chevron [WR-25-10]. In a 9 April statement the Energy Chamber of Trinidad & Tobago (ECTT), the lobby group for the energy and related sectors, described the news as “disappointing…but not unexpected”, underlining the importance of the government “continu[ing] to engage actively” with the US and Venezuela. Young has also revealed plans to seek meetings with US officials ahead of the 27 May deadline for the companies to wind down activities.

• Other opportunities?

In its 8 April statement on the revoked Ofac licenses, the Energy Chamber of Trinidad & Tobago nonetheless highlights “significant opportunities to develop natural gas fields within Trinidad & Tobago’s exclusive economic zone”. It cites the Mento and Coconut offshore gas fields being developed by US-headquartered EOG Resources and BP, Ginger which is being developed by BP, and Manatee (Shell). It also notes that there are others, including Calypso, Blackjack, and Onyx, “where companies are working towards taking a final investment decision”.