Does Calypso have a future in T&T?
7th April 2026
Just to be clear upfront, I am writing about the big gas resources in the deep waters between Tobago and Barbados, rather than the musical genre. The future of calypso music is a whole other subject, on which I have no competency to opine.
The Calypso gas resource comprises several gas discoveries in Block 23(a) and Block TTDAA 14, around 100 km to the east of Tobago (towards the maritime boundary with Barbados). Block TTDAA 14 was originally licensed to BHP in 2011, with Block 23 (a) being licensed to bp and Repsol the same year. BHP’s petroleum division was subsequently sold to fellow Australian company, Woodside, leaving BHP to concentrate on its global minerals operations and Woodside to integrate the oil and gas business into their existing operations.
T&T's role in US energy security
29th March 2026
Trinidad & Tobago plays a small, often overlooked, but nevertheless crucial, role in the energy security of the United States. At critical and stressful times for the US energy system, including winter cold snaps and summer heat waves, liquified natural gas from the Atlantic facility in Trinidad is needed to keep people in New England either warm or cool. During these times, LNG cargoes from Trinidad are imported into the Everett LNG facility in Boston to supplement the gas supplied to the northeast of the USA by pipelines.
Speaking at CERA Week, the US Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, gave a definition of energy security that emphasised the ability of the nation to provide the energy needed by all citizens at all times, even when the energy system was under strain due to extreme weather conditions. On a net basis and as the world’s biggest oil producer and biggest exporter of LNG, the United States clearly provides more total energy than it consumes. However, there are bottlenecks in the US energy system which mean that at high demand times particular geographical areas may face shortfalls from domestic sources. This is when Trinidad steps in.
Offshore gas at the forefront of Venezuela investments
28th March 2026
While the crisis in the Middle East was obviously at the top of everyone’s mind at CERA Week, Venezuela was also a major focus. Opposition leader, María Corina Machado’s speech received top billing. She laid out an ambitious reform programme for the hydrocarbon sector, with a strong focus on creating the environment to encourage private sector investment, as well as proposing the privatisation of PDVSA.
When it came to Venezuela, however, I was listening even more closely to Wael Sawan, the CEO of Shell. He spoke positively about Shell’s potential investments in Venezuela and most significantly mentioned that they were trying to advance not just one but two final investment decisions by the end of this year. One of these two will, I am sure, be the fabled Dragon gas field, which has received so much media attention over the years. The second is less clear.
The need for speed: can T&T learn from Guyana’s success?
25th March 2026
Accelerating the pace of delivery has been a major theme at this year’s CERA Week.
In a panel on developing the Atlantic margin, the Senior Vice President at Exxon in charge of deepwater developments, Hunter Farris gave the case of Trinidad & Tobago as a good recent example of moving fast through the early approval process. He reported how Exxon had signed a production sharing contract for the ultra-deepwater block TTUD1 in August 2025, received environmental approvals for their seismic campaign in December 2025, began to collect seismic data in January 2026 and were already beginning early processing of the data.