Trinidad and Tobago's state owned National Gas Co. (NGC) expects capital outlays of more than $3 billion in the country's natural gas sector the next 5 years.
NGC, which puts the Caribbean nation's gas reserves at 18.1 tcf, attributes $1 billion of that total to a 3 million metric ton/year liquefied natural gas export project being built by a group led by Amoco Corp. Amoco also is developing gas fields off Trinidad's southeastern coast to supply the LNG project and lay gas and condensate pipelines, among other work.
In addition, Trinidad will be the site of two new world scale ammonia plants to be built by U.S. firms, one 1,850 tons/day and the other 1,800 tons/day. Moreover, NGC is negotiating with a group of foreign and domestic investors to develop another ammonia plant, with a 1,000 ton/day capacity. NGC also predicts Trinidad's methanol capacity will grow by 90% to 8,830 tons/day. Other projects under way or being studied include a big jump in NGL output tied to the LNG project; polyethylene, vinyl acetate monomer, and polyvinyl chloride plants; iron carbide expansion; a new 500,000 ton/year pre-reduced iron ore briquette plant; and a new world scale plant for hot-briquetted iron. NGC contends these and other projects will hike Trinidad's gas demand to 1.6 bcfd by 2000 from 593 MMcfd in 1995.
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