Shell Trinidad and Tobago Ltd. awarded McDermott a front-end engineering design (FEED) contract for the Manatee gas development project. Under the contract scope, McDermott will provide FEED services for a wellhead platform, export pipeline system, shore approach, midstream pipeline, and onshore control room.
According to McDermott, the award follows the successful completion of an early contract engagement with Shell.
Engineering and execution planning efforts will be led by McDermott's team in Houston with support from Kuala Lumpur; Chennai, India; and Altamira, Mexico.
The Manatee field is in Block 6(d) offshore Trinidad and Tobago in water depths of around 91 m. Discovered in 2005, the field represents one of the country's largest natural gas reserves discovered to date and will help bolster the country's gas supply.
The Trinidad Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries and Shell Trinidad and Tobago Ltd. signed the Manatee field production-sharing contract in November 2021.
The field forms a part of the Loran-Manatee cross-border field with neighboring Venezuela. The Loran-Manatee reservoir has an estimated resource of over 10 Tcf of natural gas, of which around 2.7 Tcf is within the Manatee field. Sanctions against the Venezuelan government made any joint development of the reservoir unlikely and ultimately caused delays to the project.
First gas from the $1.8-billion project could flow as soon as 2025.
Waning natural gas product has put a strain on the nation’s LNG output via its Atlantic LNG plant. Trinidad is Latin America's largest exporter of LNG, with the capacity to process 4.2 Bcf/D into LNG, petrochemicals, and power. However, its gas production is running about 2.9 Bcf/D.
New gas supplies from fields like Manatee and the Woodside-operated Calypso discovery could boost Trinidad’s gas production to over 4 Bcf/D by 2030.
