OREANDA-NEWS. LNG exporter Trinidad and Tobago will continue to suffer natural gas curtailments until 2018, chairman of state-run gas company NGC Gerry Brooks says.

The projection extends by a year earlier projections by government officials that the curtailments would end in 2017.

The ongoing curtailments have hovered at 15pc-30pc for the past two years, affecting LNG production and the petrochemicals sector.

"The problems will not disappear before 2018, so we have to manage 2016 and 2017 as carefully as possible," Brooks says.

"There will be no relief from the shortage of natural gas before the Juniper project comes on stream in mid-2017," former energy minister Kevin Ramnarine had said in July.

BP?s offshore Juniper field holds an estimated 1.2 trillion ft? of gas and is projected to start delivering 590mn ft?/d in 2017.

Trinidad produced 3.907bn ft?/d (109.4mn m3/d) in the 12 months to August, 3.3pc lower than a year earlier, the energy ministry said on 12 October.

The downward trend contributed to a 2.2pc decline in LNG production to 30.6mn m? in the 12-month period, compared with the corresponding 2013-2014 period, the ministry said.

The fall in gas production has accelerated since the start of this year, reaching 3.864bn ft?/d in January-August, 5.9pc lower than a year earlier.

Gas supply will rebound on future production from fields that straddle the maritime border with Venezuela, Brooks said.

The energy ministry and state-run companies in the energy sector are working "in a very collaborative and constructive fashion to try to bring that gas to pipe as quickly as possible," he said.

Trinidad and Venezuela have long been discussing the terms under they can exploit three cross-border gas fields that contain a total estimated 11.5 trillion ft?.