OREANDA-NEWS. Major LNG exporter Trinidad and Tobago's new government has restarted discussions with Venezuela on exploiting natural gas deposits that straddle their maritime border, prime minister Keith Rowley said.

The three cross border fields hold an estimated 11.5 Tcf of reserves, both governments concluded in discussions that started in 2007. But the talks have sputtered around the naming of operators and the location for processing the gas.

"I have had a very long conversion with (Venezuelan) president Maduro about the cross-border fields," Rowley said. A Venezuelan delegation will "soon" visit Trinidad and Tobago to start he talks, he said, without giving any dates.

"The Venezuelans will arrive in the next few weeks," an official of Trinidad and Tobago's energy ministry told Argus. "Both governments are keen to get the negotiations re-started and concluded."

Rowley took office after a 7 September election that was won by his PNM party, promising to increase production of natural gas to end two years of curtailments that have depressed LNG production and affected the petrochemical sector and other downstream activities.

Trinidad and Tobago produced 17.38mn m? of LNG between January and July, down by 6.2pc from the same period in 2014. This reflected natural gas production averaging 3.859bn cf/d (108mn m?/d) for the seven-month period, 6.1pc lower than a year earlier.

Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago signed a draft agreement in September 2013 allocating an estimated 10.25 Tcf of gas reserves in the Loran-Manatee field, the largest of the three, with73.75pc going to Venezuela and the other 26.25pc to Trinidad and Tobago. The field covers block 6 on the Trinidad and Tobago side of the maritime border and block 2 on the Venezuelan side.

US major Chevron already has a Venezuelan license to extract gas from the Plataforma Deltana complex that covers Loran. Chevron is also in a joint venture with the UK's BG for the Manatee field on Trinidad's side of the border.

One sticking point in previous talks was which side would market the gas. Trinidad wants to liquefy and market the gas through its existing Atlantic facility, which has 14.8mn t/yr of capacity, while Venezuela was to bring it to its Cigma industrial complex which is under construction in Sucre state.

"These matters will constitute the agenda for the impending negotiations," the energy ministry official said.