Colombia: Venezuela reaches gas deal with Trinidad

Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago have reached a transaction to jointly produce gas from fields located between the South Americn country's coast and the two Caribbean islands, Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said.

Venezuelan national-owned oil giant PDVSA and U.S. supermajor Chevron Corp. will produce the gas from unified offshore fields that contain nearly 12 trillian cubic feet of natural gas, the energy minister said.

The transaction was sealed on Tuesday night with Trinidadian Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine, who traveled to Caracas to wrap up the agreement, Ramirez said.

The gas production agreement is scheduled to be signed in the Venezuelan capital next week, the energy minister said.
"We are going to sign the document approving the functional structure and governability of the operations of the unified fields next week with the presence of Minister" Ramnarine, Ramirez said.

The biggest of the fields has 10.25 trillion cubic feet of gas, of which "73.75 % is Venezuela's and 26.25 % is Trinidad and Tobago's," Ramirez said.

Production from this field will be undertaken from the Venezuelan side, Ramirez, who as well serves as CEO of Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, said.

"We have reached an agreement. We are going to exploit it from the Venezuelan side, where 73.75 % of the gas is ... and we are going to do it between PDVSA Gas and Chevron," the energy minister said.

Trinidad has a bigger ownership stake in the other two shared fields, which hold additional than 1 trillion cubic feet of gas, and the two nations "are making advances on the technical side," Ramirez said, without providing additional details on the talks.
"We are going to be able to take this gas from here to Colombia. We are going to be able to export it and we will continue guaranteeing (the supply) to our domestic market," the Venezuelan energy minister said. EFE