Heavy haul marks key step in Manatee Plus gas project

A crit­i­cal piece of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy fu­ture has now moved from plan­ning to ex­e­cu­tion, with the suc­cess­ful trans­port of ma­jor in­dus­tri­al equip­ment for the Man­a­tee Plus project—an op­er­a­tion that un­der­scores both the ur­gency and scale of in­vest­ment now un­fold­ing in the sec­tor.

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries con­firmed that, on Sun­day, Shell T&T com­plet­ed a high-risk heavy-haul op­er­a­tion along the Guayagua­yare–Ma­yaro cor­ri­dor, mov­ing a gas sep­a­ra­tor and Cross Is­land Pipeline drum from Ga­le­o­ta Port to the Beach­field fa­cil­i­ty.

The op­er­a­tion, the state­ment said, was not rou­tine. It re­quired co­or­di­nat­ed traf­fic con­trol, reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight, and law en­force­ment sup­port to move over­sized equip­ment across pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture with­out in­ci­dent.

Cru­cial­ly, it said the move on­ly be­came pos­si­ble af­ter struc­tur­al re­pairs to the Lizard Riv­er Bridge were car­ried out be­tween Oc­to­ber 2025 and April 2026 through col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Shell and the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture.

The up­grades en­sured the bridge could with­stand the load, re­mov­ing a key bot­tle­neck that could have stalled the project.

The Min­istry added that this was more than lo­gis­tics, as it sig­nalled that one of the coun­try’s most im­por­tant gas de­vel­op­ments is ad­vanc­ing on sched­ule.

“This op­er­a­tion rep­re­sents a key lo­gis­tics mile­stone for the Man­a­tee Plus project, a ma­jor off­shore gas de­vel­op­ment ex­pect­ed to sup­port Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fu­ture nat­ur­al gas sup­ply and long-term en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty. The trans­porta­tion of ma­jor pro­cess­ing equip­ment brings a tan­gi­ble el­e­ment to this project, as cit­i­zens can now see that sig­nif­i­cant work is be­ing done in the en­er­gy sec­tor. It is al­ways re­as­sur­ing to see the phys­i­cal el­e­ments of a de­vel­op­ment be­ing con­struct­ed and in­stalled, as it sig­nals that the de­vel­op­ment is be­com­ing a re­al­i­ty. The Man­a­tee Plus project is con­tin­u­ing as per sched­ule, and the ac­tiv­i­ties over the last cou­ple of days are a tes­ta­ment to the in­vest­ments that are flow­ing in­to the coun­try,” the Min­istry stat­ed.

The Man­a­tee Plus project is one of the few large-scale up­stream de­vel­op­ments ca­pa­ble of re­vers­ing de­clin­ing gas out­put, which has con­strained petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion and ex­port earn­ings in re­cent years.

The Gov­ern­ment has placed heavy em­pha­sis on ac­cel­er­at­ing first gas, with out­put lev­els re­vised up­wards fol­low­ing di­rect en­gage­ment with Shell.

The Min­istry not­ed that in­creased pro­duc­tion tar­gets were aligned with di­rec­tives from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The ex­e­cu­tion of the heavy haul now shifts at­ten­tion to the next phas­es of in­stal­la­tion and com­mis­sion­ing, as the coun­try looks to sta­bilise gas sup­ply and re­store con­fi­dence in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The Min­istry al­so ac­knowl­edged the scale of co­or­di­na­tion be­hind the op­er­a­tion, point­ing to the plan­ning, en­gi­neer­ing, and in­ter-agency sup­port re­quired to ex­e­cute the move with­out dis­rup­tion.