In­vest­ments to­talling $US55 mil­lion, pos­si­ble max­i­mum ex­pen­di­ture of $US945 mil­lion in the de­vel­op­ment phase, cre­ation of new jobs and sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty are ex­pect­ed from sign­ing of on­shore li­cens­es by three en­er­gy com­pa­nies–Range Re­sources Lim­it­ed, Primera Oil and Gas and Lease Op­er­a­tors Lim­it­ed.In ad­di­tion, Gov­ern­ment will ben­e­fit from tax­es and roy­al­ties, while state-owned Petrotrin will re­alise new sources of crude oil for its re­fin­ery.

The En­er­gy Min­istry said in a re­lease that the sign­ings were the cul­mi­na­tion of three years of col­lab­o­ra­tive work by of­fi­cers of sev­er­al state agen­cies, in­clud­ing the min­istry, Petrotrin, the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, and the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands. The li­cences will re­sult in the drilling of 12 ex­plo­ration wells, ac­qui­si­tion of 3D and 2D seis­mic and re­pro­cess­ing of ex­ist­ing 3D seis­mic.The 2013 On­shore Bid Round was the first ded­i­cat­ed land based bid round in 15 years and the award of the li­cences is part of the wider strat­e­gy by the min­istry to in­crease pro­duc­tion of crude oil.The to­tal area un­der li­cense in the three blocks is 64,000 hectares with po­ten­tial to pro­duce more than 800 mil­lion bar­rels of oil.

Range Re­sources Lim­it­ed, which signed a li­cence for the St Mary's Block, said in a re­lease it has com­mit­ted to drilling four ex­plo­ration wells, shoot­ing of 160 km 2D seis­mic and 60km2 of 3D seis­mic, along with var­i­ous oth­er tech­ni­cal stud­ies. As part of the award, Petrotrin was giv­en a 20 per cent car­ried in­ter­est through the ex­plo­ration work pro­gramme com­mit­ment.Range said it is in fi­nal ne­go­ti­a­tions for a joint op­er­at­ing agree­ment with Petrotrin.The west­ern part of 44,731 acre block is ad­ja­cent to Range's pro­duc­tion in­fra­struc­ture which could be used in de­vel­op­ment of any dis­cov­er­ies.

Range's eval­u­a­tion of ex­ist­ing seis­mic and well da­ta has en­abled the com­pa­ny to high-grade a num­ber of ar­eas and the ex­plo­ration po­ten­tial of St Mary's will be as­sessed fur­ther through ac­qui­si­tion and in­ter­pre­ta­tion of new 2D and 3D seis­mic.Mean­while, Primera of­fi­cials an­nounced yes­ter­day that un­der the li­cence for the Or­toire block in south Trinidad, the com­pa­ny will be the op­er­a­tor with an 80 per cent work­ing in­ter­est, while Petrotrin holds the re­main­ing 20 per cent part­ner in­ter­est.The block is lo­cat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten kilo­me­tres east of Primera's of­fice in Fyz­abad and cov­ers ap­prox­i­mate­ly 44,731 gross acres.James Ship­ka, chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer, said: "The Or­toire Ex­plo­ration Block adds a sig­nif­i­cant and ex­cit­ing ex­plo­ration op­por­tu­ni­ty to our Trinidad oil port­fo­lio." See Page A18