The Gov­ern­ment is push­ing ahead with dis­cus­sions on the de­vel­op­ment of the Man­akin/Cocuina cross-bor­der gas project, with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal meet­ing bpTT and Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) of­fi­cials on Thurs­day.

Talks at the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries’ head of­fice fo­cused on the sta­tus of the Man­akin/Cocuina nat­ur­al gas re­source, which strad­dles the mar­itime bound­ary be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

The meet­ing al­so ex­am­ined op­por­tu­ni­ties for the Gov­ern­ment, bpTT and NGC to work to­geth­er to ad­vance de­vel­op­ment of the re­source.

Mooni­lal led the dis­cus­sions with per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Karin­sa Tulsie, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary (Ag) Ava Ma­habir-Dass and of­fi­cials from the min­istry, bpTT and NGC.

Man­akin/Cocuina has emerged as an­oth­er po­ten­tial source of gas as T&T seeks to strength­en sup­plies for its en­er­gy sec­tor and max­imise the de­vel­op­ment of cross-bor­der re­sources.

The min­istry did not pro­vide de­tails on a de­vel­op­ment time­line, the es­ti­mat­ed gas re­serves, the com­mer­cial struc­ture be­ing con­sid­ered or the in­vest­ment re­quired to bring the re­source in­to pro­duc­tion.

The dis­cus­sions form part of on­go­ing ef­forts to ad­vance the project and as­sess its po­ten­tial con­tri­bu­tion to T&T’s nat­ur­al gas sec­tor.

Mooni­lal stressed the need for con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion among the stake­hold­ers as the coun­try ex­am­ines op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­vel­op its nat­ur­al gas re­sources.

The Gov­ern­ment is al­so seek­ing to strength­en the en­er­gy sec­tor through the re­spon­si­ble de­vel­op­ment of avail­able re­sources.

No agree­ment on the de­vel­op­ment of Man­akin/Cocuina was an­nounced fol­low­ing Thurs­day’s meet­ing, with dis­cus­sions ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue among the par­ties.