BP to sell 20% stake in Manakin gas field to Trinidad's NGC

The Cocuina-Manakin field, which contains 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, straddles the maritime boundary between Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela, with the Cocuina section forming part of Venezuela's undeveloped Deltana Platform gas project.

NGC already holds a 20% stake in the Cocuina portion on the Venezuelan side. The latest agreement comes less than four months after Venezuela granted BP a license to develop that field.

Because 66% of the Cocuina-Manakin gas field is on the Trinidad side of the border, the NGC did not want to have a 20% stake on the Venezuela side and nothing on the Trinidad side, NGC Chairman Gerald Ramdeen told Reuters after the signing.

"We have a strategy to get a stake in the upstream in most of the gas projects so we can be a producer of gas and be able to sell it on to the users at a reasonable price," Ramdeen said.

BP has agreed to sell a 20% stake in a block that contains the Trinidad portion of the cross-border Cocuina-Manakin natural gas field to the country's state-owned National Gas Company, the company said on Monday in an emailed statement.

BP and NGC signed the deal for the stake in the Manakin portion of the gas field on Monday, BP added.

BP and NGC have agreed to market 70% of the project's gas to Atlantic LNG, which operates Latin America's largest liquefied natural gas export facility, NGC said.

The complex has struggled in recent years due to declining domestic natural gas supplies in Trinidad that have constrained its output, forcing the closure of one of its four trains.

BP owns a 45% stake in Atlantic LNG, while NGC holds 10% and Shell owns the remaining 45%. Venezuela's oil ministry did not immediately reply to requests for comment.