Trinidad and Tobago is to intensify its industrial development and exports based on natural gas. By 2020, Trinidad and Tobago expects its hydrocarbon production to meet or exceed 1 million boe per day, according to the new minister of energy and energy industries, Eric A. Williams. Gas production is expected to climb to almost 3.7 bscfd by 2006, and proven reserves are likely to top 20tcf this year. Analysis by the state-owned gas company, National Gas Co. of Trinidad & Tobago Ltd (NGC), stresses a need to prove an additional 39 tcf to support an acceptable reserves-to-production (R-P) ratio to sustain demand scenarios to 2020. The boom in natural gas exploration and development off Trinidad has helped the twin-island nation transform itself from a sleepy backwater oil producer into a major player on the Western Hemisphere gas scene. In the 1980s the government’s focus changed from oil to gas as the country’s natural gas endowment grew and its oil sector declined. Gas production surged by 10% a year, with sales rocketing to more than 1.4 bscfd by 2001 from 250 MMscfd in 1981. The nation has also become the world’s No. I exporter of both ammonia and methanol and will become, Williams predicts, the world’s fifth largest exporter of LNG by 2005. Expansions under way at the Atlantic LNG Co. of Trinidad & Tobago Ltd LNG (ALNG) export plant at Port Fortin, Trinidad, could go beyond the second and third trains currently under construction to as many as six trains. Beyond those three, the government has targeted as priorities projects to produce ethylene, acetic acid, dimethyl ether, and products derived from gas-to-liquids processes.
As well as building up the nation’s gas industry, its energy policy includes: building an national engineering design capability, expanding the local role in the management and ownership of ALNG shipping and transportation, greater local participation in the production of ethylene and alliances between global and local energy service providers.
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