Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, began operating in Trinidad and Tobago in 1912, marketing gasoline and refined oil products.
In 1956, The Texas Co., as Texaco was then known, acquired a number of companies, including Trinidad Oil Co., a petrochemical plant, oceangoing tankers and other assets.
Trinidad was made the headquarters for our rapidly expanding Caribbean and Latin American marketing operations.
During the 1960s, Texaco discovered oil in the Navette and Goudron fields and successfully bid on new exploration blocks. The Dolphin Field was discovered in 1976, followed by the Ibis, Kiskidee, Pelican and Oilbird fields offshore Trinidad's east coast in the early 1980s.
After signing a gas sales agreement in 1993, the Dolphin Field was developed with BG as partner and operator of the field. Following the government's acquisition of the Point-a-Pierre Refinery, exploration and production became our major focus in Trinidad and Tobago.
In 1996, natural gas from the Dolphin Field began to supply domestic markets. In 2006, the first natural gas from Dolphin Deep was delivered through the Beachfield gas processing facility on the southeast coast of Trinidad to the Atlantic LNG Co.'s liquefied natural gas processing facility in Point Fortin.
Chevron signed a sales agreement in 2007 to supply the domestic market with an additional 220 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. Drilling of five additional wells to supply gas for the new contract began at Dolphin in 2008. The wells began producing natural gas in late 2008, with all five wells completed by early 2009.
Chevron successfully drilled an exploratory well in Block 6(d) of the Manatee Field in 2005. This field is an extension of the six shallow gas sands discovered in Venezuela's Loran Field, just a few miles away. In 2007, an overarching treaty was signed by the governments of Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago. In 2010, the two governments signed the Loran/Manatee unitization treaty.
In 2006, Chevron worked with partners to build a 60-mile (96 km) pipeline to transport produced natural gas from the Dolphin platform to the Beachfield gas processing facility, which was built at the same time, on the southeast coast of Trinidad. The Beachfield facilities supply gas into the Atlantic LNG processing facility at Point Fortin through the cross-island pipeline. Chevron sold its interests in 2010.
Updated: April 2013
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