Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has wel­comed re­cent progress on Shell’s Man­a­tee gas project and urged the com­pa­ny to ex­plore in­creas­ing gas out­put to ad­dress Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ur­gent gas short­age.

In a me­dia state­ment, Dr Mooni­lal said, “I am very pleased with the progress Shell is mak­ing with the Man­a­tee project. The most re­cent de­vel­op­ment is the ar­rival in the coun­try of the MV Vox Amalia hop­per dredger which will con­duct trench­ing op­er­a­tions for a com­po­nent of the Man­a­tee pipeline. Re­lat­ed works are al­so on­go­ing to pre­pare in­fra­struc­ture in Guayagua­yare.”

He de­scribed the project as one shaped over sev­er­al ad­min­is­tra­tions and out­lined its back­ground. “In 2003, a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (2003 MOU) con­cern­ing the pro­ce­dure for the uni­ti­sa­tion of cross-bor­der hy­dro­car­bon reser­voirs was suc­cess­ful­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed and ex­e­cut­ed by T&T and Venezuela.