CERAWEEK-Woodside seeks better terms to develop Trinidad's Calypso gas project
HOUSTON, March 22 (Reuters) - Australian oil and gas producer Woodside Energy would like to see improved fiscal terms from the Trinidad and Tobago government before committing to develop a deepwater natural gas project there, CEO Meg O'Neill told Reuters this week.
The Caribbean nation suffers from a shortage of gas for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) and petrochemical businesses, and has been urging Woodside, BP and Shell to expand their activity.
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O'Neill said the Calypso production sharing contract was originally designed for a more lucrative oil discovery, not natural gas.
"The fiscal terms are probably well suited for oil, but they have to be a little bit different for gas," O'Neill said on the sidelines of CERAWeek energy conference.
Trinidad and Woodside's non-operating partner BP have been pushing to commence production of Calypso's estimated 3.5 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of recoverable reserves.
"I certainly appreciate when a non-operated partner wants to encourage us to move forward, but as I said we have to make sure we get the commercial matters sorted," O'Neill said.
Woodside is talking to Trinidad's National Gas Company and the partners of Trinidad's flagship LNG project, Atlantic LNG, to sell the gas into the domestic and export markets, she said.
"It is important for us to progress the commercial and regulatory work in parallel with the technical work so we don't spend a lot of money before we have commercial line of sight," she said.
Woodside has completed the concept select study and knows how it wants to develop the field, O'Neill added.
(Reporting by Curtis Williams in HoustonEditing by Marguerita Choy)