PM, Shell execs talk Atlantic restructuring

WHILE the UK mourned its queen, the day after her death, TT's Prime Minister and his energy minister were busy holding high-level talks with senior members of Shell on Friday in The Hague, Netherlands.

Chief among the topics discussed, according to a release from the Office of the Prime Minister, was the imminent conclusion of the commercial restructuring of Atlantic.

This, the release said, would enable future upstream developments, especially the Manatee project, which has the potential to bring online one of the most significant gas developments in recent years.

Dr Rowley and Energy Minister Stuart Young also discussed Shell's current and future development projects in this country.

The meeting was hosted by Wael Sawan, director of Integrated Gas and Renewable Energy Solutions; Cederic Cremers, executive vice president for LNG; Eugene Okpere, senior vice president and country chair for Shell TT; and Anders Ekvall, business opportunity manager for Shell.

Both parties acknowledged the success of their continued collaboration, the release said, which resulted in an increase in Shell’s production over the last five years, since the company re-entered the upstream market in 2016.

This co-operation between Trinidad and Tobago and Shell unlocked projects such as Starfish, Barracuda and Colibri and resulted in an incease of over 30 per cent in production over the period, with current production of approximately 850 million standard cubic feet of gas as of Friday – a seven-year high for Shell in TT.

Rowley and Young also received presentations on Shell’s global business on LNG, Hydrogen and on carbon-capture utilisation and storage (CCUS).

The Shell team lauded the PM and Young for their continued co-operation in developing this country’s gas production and reaffirmed their intention to sustain and grow competitive energy resources in TT.

Friday's meeting came on the heels of similar meetings Rowley and Young held with British Petroleum (BP) execs on Thursday – the day the queen died.

The PM and Young met on that day with BP CEO Bernard Looney at BP's headquarters in London. At this meeting, BP updated Rowley on its plans for future gas production in TT.

Rowley and his team left TT on September 2 for meetings in Switzerland, the UK and the Netherlands with executives of Proman, BP and Shell.