While Venezuela has char­tered its path for eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery and has huge gas re­serves, enough for T&T and oth­er coun­tries, that coun­try lo­cat­ed on the north­ern coast of South Amer­i­can needs in­vest­ments.

Such in­vest­ments al­so need to be in­te­grat­ed and must al­so work in Venezuela’s in­ter­est, says San­ti­a­go Fontiveros, part­ner of the pri­vate eq­ui­ty en­er­gy com­pa­ny, Su­cre En­er­gy Group.

He made the com­ments while speak­ing on a pan­el ti­tled, “In­vest­ing in re­gion­al gas mar­ket in­te­gra­tion” host­ed by the T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber on day two of the T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence which was held at the Hy­att Re­gency on Tues­day.

“In the au­thor­i­ties’ mind there is go­ing to be a lot of need for nat­ur­al gas in the coun­try and that’s im­por­tant to un­der­stand, as a ne­go­ti­a­tion tool, as a geopo­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy and al­so we think as steel­mak­ers that is the key to un­der­stand­ing Venezuela’s needs so that Venezuela can al­so help Trinidad with its needs.

“The good thing is there is plen­ty of gas. Enough for Venezuela, enough for Trinidad, enough for Co­lum­bia and oth­er coun­tries ... but ob­vi­ous­ly Venezuela needs a lot of in­vest­ment. It needs a frame­work, both le­gal and eco­nom­ic, that can work for the in­vestors and the na­tion,” said Fontiveros.

T&T, he not­ed, “is do­ing the right things” and has been do­ing so in the last few years by es­tab­lish­ing a chan­nel of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment.

“And if there is one thing we are try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate is that the op­por­tu­ni­ty for co­op­er­a­tion is there but the key to un­lock­ing that val­ue is un­der­stand­ing the needs of Venezuela and what we are try­ing to get at as a coun­try. So that if we help Venezuela to get there faster, there will be much more gas for the re­gion.

“We have in­vest­ed a lot of mon­ey in try­ing to un­der­stand the flar­ing side, what we’re flar­ing, what is the gas need­ed for and we know the op­por­tu­ni­ties are there. But if you go and say, ‘Ok I want to in­vest and I just want to get the gas out,’ that’s prob­a­bly not the right way to do it be­cause there are a lot of needs in the na­tion for that gas. But if we go and say, ‘Let me help you with the sit­u­a­tion, let me in­vest with you along. Let me cov­er your needs, you have plen­ty of gas al­so for me and for the re­gion,’ I think that’s a win­ning speech,” Fontiveros ex­plained.

He said if this “win­ning strat­e­gy” is looked at, the “macro-po­lit­i­cal and the macro­eco­nom­ics of gas will come in­to place,” adding that “it just makes a lot of sense.”

How­ev­er, the ques­tion is “How we can make it faster, bet­ter and more in­te­grat­ed,” Fontiveros added.

Not­ing that Venezuela coun­try has huge re­serves in­clud­ing known as­so­ci­at­ed gas off­shore and on­shore re­serves up­ward of 200 tril­lion cu­bic feet, Fontiveros said it’s not the sheer size of the re­serves that makes Venezuela great but the ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of these fields.

“It’s pret­ty much a plain ter­rain. You can dri­ve a Toy­ota Corol­la to most of the fields and with­in a ra­tio of 30 to 45 min­utes you have five-star ho­tels to the main fields where the flar­ing is hap­pen­ing,” he ex­plained.

Fontiveros fur­ther not­ed that Venezuela has “idle in­dus­tri­al ca­pac­i­ty for around 600 to 1 bil­lion cu­bic feet of gas” which has al­ready been built al­though be­ing “de­pre­ci­at­ed.”

“But it’s there. With pri­vate in­vest­ment you can restart those ... so the mes­sage is, there is enough gas but you need pri­vate in­vest­ment. So with pri­vate in­vest­ment you start to build trust, trust to start with un­der­stand­ing each one’s needs. It starts with diplo­ma­cy. It starts with busi­ness­peo­ple putting their brains to­geth­er think­ing, ‘How do we arrange this? How do we struc­ture this?’ That’s what the pri­vate sec­tor is good at,” he added.

Po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties for Venezue­lan and T&T ser­vices com­pa­nies work­ing to­geth­er were al­so brought to the fore.

Julián Graterón, di­rec­tor, Cá­mara Petrol­era de Venezuela (Venezue­lan Oil Cham­ber) said per­haps in the fu­ture, there can be a “bi-na­tion­al cham­ber” be­tween Venezuela and T&T to fur­ther strength­en the en­er­gy ser­vices sec­tor.

“In Venezuela, we are very ea­ger to share in­for­ma­tion be­tween ser­vice com­pa­nies and that’s the in­vi­ta­tion for the TT com­pa­nies, to come to Venezuela and we could share mar­ket in­tel­li­gence,” Graterón out­lined.

Graterón is al­so a di­rec­tor at Servi Com­pre­sores CA, a com­pa­ny spe­cialised in the man­u­fac­ture and re­pair of valves, parts and com­po­nents for rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing com­pres­sors in the oil and gas in­dus­try.

He said the com­pa­ny’s main goal is to ob­tain all the da­ta from the fi­nal users and share this with the cham­bers.

In stress­ing how crit­i­cal da­ta shar­ing re­mains to es­tab­lish­ing new link­ages and fos­ter­ing greater ties, Graterón said six months ago he got a call from a T&T en­ti­ty that want­ed to do busi­ness in Venezuela.

How­ev­er, this could not be brought to fruition.

“We didn’t have enough in­for­ma­tion about the mar­ket, the reg­u­la­tions, the due dili­gence. We didn’t progress in this con­ver­sa­tion so it’s one ex­am­ple of what we should have as a ser­vice for both cham­bers and we should de­vel­op these con­ver­sa­tions,” Graterón said as he stressed, “We have to strength­en these Caribbean com­mu­ni­ties of ser­vice providers.”

Fontiveros al­so echoed there is a big op­por­tu­ni­ty for lo­cals to work in Venezuela.

“Both be­cause they are in­ter­est­ed in help­ing be­cause it is moni­ti­s­able and you’re in­ter­est­ed in Venezuela hav­ing a prop­er gas mar­ket so that it helps with the ex­port and al­so be­cause you guys have a lot of ex­per­tise in the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor which is some­thing that is a top pri­or­i­ty for the gov­ern­ment.

“We start with what we have and in­cre­ment is the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor. If you look at one of the trans­for­ma­tions that they con­tin­ue to talk about is what they call di­ver­si­fy­ing with­in the sec­tor. So com­ing from oil, to gas and petro­chem­i­cal as sources of rev­enue, not just de­pen­dent on oil and that’s a big pri­or­i­ty po­lit­i­cal­ly. So what bet­ter than our neigh­bours ... you guys have done an amaz­ing job in build­ing that in­fra­struc­ture,” Fontiveros said, as he re­called his vis­it to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate last year.

He re­it­er­at­ed that there is so much both coun­tries can do re­gard­ing on­shore, petro­chem­i­cals and in the ex­port of gas.