Shell has not made a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion for the pro­duc­tion of the Drag­on gas field, as this de­ci­sion does not arise un­til var­i­ous stud­ies and re­ports are com­plet­ed.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young con­firmed this in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, re­ply­ing to op­po­si­tion queries on whether Shell had made a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion for the mon­eti­sa­tion of the Drag­on gas field.

Young said, “These stud­ies and re­ports are in progress and on sched­ule at this time, pur­suant to the terms of the li­cence grant­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela.

“As was re­cent­ly an­nounced, there are ma­rine sur­vey ves­sels cur­rent­ly sur­vey­ing the Drag­on field and the po­ten­tial seabed path­ways for the sub­sea pipeline from the Drag­on field to the Hi­bis­cus plat­form. En­gi­neer­ing works and pro­cure­ment ex­er­cis­es are al­so on­go­ing as ex­pect­ed.”

Young al­so list­ed the en­ti­ties that sub­mit­ted bids for the pur­chase of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

The ten re­fin­ery bid­ders are:

• Colum­bus Re­fin­ery Trinidad & To­ba­go Lim­it­ed

• CRO–Chemie-Tech LLC, DR Com­modi­ties Lim­it­ed, Ocala Ser­vices Lim­it­ed

• GN Fence­line So­lu­tions Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed

• IEM Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed

• In­ca En­er­gy, LLC

• In­tegri­tus Group Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed

• Nau­ti­cal Part­ners Lim­it­ed

• Oan­do Trad­ing DM­CC

• Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gy Ser­vices Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed

• Sarge En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed

The names of the peo­ple who com­prise the Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee ap­point­ed to re­view the sub­mit­ted bids are T&T’s High Com­mis­sion­er to Lon­don Vish­nu Dhan­paul, San­dra Fras­er (Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Min­istry of En­er­gy), and Al­ter­nate Dex­ter Jag­ger­nauth, Jim­myy Wong (Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (Ag), Fi­nance Min­istry), Sel­wyn Lash­ley (Strate­gic En­er­gy Ad­vi­sor, En­er­gy Min­istry), Vin­cent Per­reira (for­mer Up­stream chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer and en­er­gy in­dus­try ex­pert), and Melis­sa In­gle­field (at­tor­ney, part­ner at M Hamel-Smith and Com­pa­ny).

Young said each of the com­pa­nies who sub­mit­ted non-bind­ing of­fers (NBOs) were of­fered the same ac­cess to the vir­tu­al da­ta room in which all re­fin­ery-re­lat­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion is lodged.

“Any ad­di­tion­al doc­u­ments re­quest­ed by in­di­vid­ual com­pa­nies were shared to all of the com­pa­nies thus en­sur­ing that each had ac­cess to the same da­ta. Man­age­ment pre­sen­ta­tions were com­plet­ed for all com­pa­nies who sub­mit­ted an NBO. All com­pa­nies had at least one tour of the re­fin­ery and were of­fered the op­por­tu­ni­ty for fol­low-up site vis­its,” he added.

There were fol­low-up meet­ings af­ter the May 10, 2024 sub­mis­sion  to dis­cuss the in­di­vid­ual com­mer­cial mod­els with the TPHL and Sco­tia Cap­i­tal (USA) Inc. teams.

Ad­di­tion­al time—up to Ju­ly 31, 2024—to up­date and re­sub­mit NBOs post-fol­low-up meet­ings was giv­en to all com­pa­nies. There was al­so fol­low-up cor­re­spon­dence and an open line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Sco­tia Cap­i­tal (USA) Inc. to pro­vide clar­i­fi­ca­tions re­gard­ing their project fund­ing.

Young al­so replied on ac­tion tak­en on Sep­tem­ber 1 by the Cab­i­net to en­sure that all debts owed to the T&T Up­stream Down­stream En­er­gy Op­er­a­tions Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed by Ni­quan were re­cov­ered.

“Based on le­gal ad­vice re­ceived, TTUDEO­CL did not pur­sue in­volve­ment in the court process in­volv­ing Ni­Quan’s wind­ing up,” he said.

“This was on the ba­sis that TTUDEO­CL was pre­pared to con­sid­er ne­go­ti­a­tions in good faith with the re­ceiv­er/man­ag­er ap­point­ed. This was con­sid­ered as the most pru­dent av­enue to re­cov­er the debt owed by Ni­Quan, as TTUDEO­CL is an un­se­cured cred­i­tor.”

“On or around Oc­to­ber 24, 2024, TTUDECOL was in­formed by an ad­ver­tise­ment in the dai­ly news­pa­pers that a re­ceiv­er was ap­point­ed for Ni­Quan and there­fore is in the process of writ­ing to the re­ceiv­er to out­line its claims.”