Trinidad and Tobago's Natural Gas Reserves Continue to Fall

• Trinidad and Tobago's natural gas reserves fell by 8.0% between 2020 and 2022, according to the latest gas audit.
• The Express Business has confirmed that according to the audit done by DeGolyer & MacNaughton, the country's proven, probable, and possible reserves fell from 23.265 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas in 2020 to 21.953 in 2021 to a low of 21.409 in 2022.
• According to BP's statistical guidelines, proven reserves are “those quantities of petroleum anticipated to be commercially recoverable by application of development projects to known accumulations from a given date forward under defined conditions.”
• Probable reserves are estimated to have a better than 50.0% chance of being technically and economically producible, and possible reserves are volumes which, at present, cannot be regarded as “probable”, but are estimated to have a significant (albeit less than 50%) chance of being produced.
• The country uses just over one tcf per day of proven reserves, and therefore, if no more gas moves into the proven column, the country could run out of gas in the next ten years.  
• “Gas production decline has been taking place since 2012, and unfortunately, nothing was done during the period of 2010 to 2015 to secure better revenue for our gas, nor was a single gas supply contract negotiated and executed for the upstream supply of gas. This poorly managed period negatively affected our gas sector, revenue, and gas production”, the Energy Minister said.
• Overall, Trinidad’s declining reserves and mature fields have led to a lower GDP outturn for the country in recent years. For 2023, real GDP growth for the country is estimated at 1.4%, down from the 1.5% recorded in 2022, with contributions from the non-energy sector being 2.6% and -1.3% from the energy sector.

(Sources: Trinidad Express Newspaper & NCBCM Research)