The En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad & To­ba­go has de­scribed the de­ci­sion of the US Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) to re­voke two spe­cial li­cences for the Drag­on and Cocuina-Man­akin fields as dis­ap­point­ing but not un­ex­pect­ed, giv­en the pre­vi­ous can­cel­la­tion of oth­er gen­er­al and spe­cial li­cences for com­pa­nies work­ing in Venezuela.

The Cham­ber said in a news re­lease that the im­por­ta­tion of pipeline gas from Venezuela for pro­cess­ing and on­ward sales to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets as ei­ther LNG or petro­chem­i­cals re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty for Trinidad & To­ba­go and added that it is im­por­tant that the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to en­gage ac­tive­ly with both the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States and Venezuela to find a mech­a­nism to pur­sue this op­por­tu­ni­ty.

"At the same time, there are sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­vel­op nat­ur­al gas fields with­in Trinidad & To­ba­go’s ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zone and these must al­so be pur­sued ac­tive­ly and ur­gent­ly. There are a num­ber of fields, in­clud­ing Men­to, Co­conut, Gin­ger and Man­a­tee, that are cur­rent­ly be­ing de­vel­oped and oth­ers, in­clud­ing Ca­lyp­so, Black­jack and Onyx where com­pa­nies are work­ing to­wards tak­ing a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion," the state­ment said.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber said that all of these op­por­tu­ni­ties should be pur­sued to help main­tain and in­crease Trinidad & To­ba­go’s up­stream gas pro­duc­tion.