Aleem Khan

Af­ter li­cens­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12.5 per cent or one-eighth of T&T's to­tal land mass for oil and gas ex­plo­ration Fri­day, En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine fore­cast that when they come in­to pro­duc­tion, the coun­try's crude oil out­put will re­turn to over 100,000 bar­rels of oil per day (bopd)–where it was in 2009."We be­lieve that once we have pro­duc­tion com­ing from these three blocks, we will see oil pro­duc­tion in T&T go back to over 100,000 bopd, which is where we would all like to see oil pro­duc­tion, head­ing back to six fig­ures, which is where we were some five years ago," Ram­nar­ine said.

The blocks are prospec­tive for 822 mil­lion bar­rels of oil.T&T's oil pro­duc­tion as at Oc­to­ber 26, av­er­aged 85,277 bopd, which Ram­nar­ine said was the high­est oil pro­duc­tion record­ed in more than two years. For the last 21 months, he said, pro­duc­tion had been av­er­ag­ing about 81,000 bopd.He said new con­den­sate crude pro­duc­tion by BP, the quick bring­ing of Rep­sol's Ju­ly-an­nounced find in­to pro­duc­tion, and new high qual­i­ty crude finds and pro­duc­tion by Leni Gas and Oil drove the in­crease.

He said next year he ex­pects an in­crease in pro­duc­tion from Trin­mar from the South­west Sol­da­do field, new oil fields, new dis­cov­er­ies, and the ap­pli­ca­tion of en­hanced oil re­cov­ery tech­niques. He said for 2015, the En­er­gy Min­istry is con­sid­er­ing an­oth­er on­shore bid round, and an­oth­er off­shore bid round but for shal­low to av­er­age-depth acreage."We are cur­rent­ly look­ing at what land is avail­able in south Trinidad," for an­oth­er on­shore bid round, he said.

Ram­nar­ine said he will sign two more deep­wa­ter li­cences in "a cou­ple weeks" and this will bring the num­ber of PSCs man­aged by the En­er­gy Min­istry to nine. On acreage al­ready li­censed to it, BHP Bil­li­ton is con­duct­ing one of the largest seis­mic sur­veys in the world, the min­is­ter said.Over the last four years, the En­er­gy Min­istry has en­tered in­to 12 pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts (PSCs) and grant­ed six li­cens­es for oil and gas ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion, to­talling an un­prece­dent­ed num­ber of 18 po­ten­tial dri­vers of in­creased oil pro­duc­tion. Ram­nar­ine said in the last four years the min­istry has "signed over more acreage" and added that he be­lieves he has "put more acreage up for ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment than at any time in his­to­ry of T&T."

Three six-year li­cences were signed Fri­day al­low­ing three com­pa­nies to ex­plore and pro­duce oil from St Mary's (Moru­ga), Or­toire, and Rio Claro over the next six years. The St Mary's block was li­censed to Aus­tralia's Range Re­sources Ltd. The Or­toire block was li­censed to Cana­da's Touch­stone. The Rio Claro block was li­censed to T&T's Lease Op­er­a­tors Ltd. Un­der the li­cence, each com­pa­ny must con­duct five ge­o­log­i­cal stud­ies and drill four wells. Ram­nar­ine said "a sig­nif­i­cant part" of the acreage has not been cov­ered by 3D seis­mic sur­veys but the com­pa­nies have com­mit­ted to com­plete them. The min­i­mum in­vest­ment ex­pect­ed is US$55 mil­lion, and the max­i­mum in­vest­ment ex­pect­ed–in the event of com­mer­cial dis­cov­ery–is US$945 mil­lion.

The on­shore blocks are "on trend with ex­ist­ing and pro­duc­ing oil­fields" said Ram­nar­ine.Daniel Brash, Lease Op­er­a­tors Ltd di­rec­tor and grand­son of Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um founder Charles Brash, had said the same, but added he is hop­ing to get 5,000 bopd out of Rio Claro.Ram­nar­ine de­scribed the com­pa­nies as "three of the most ag­gres­sive" com­pa­nies in oil and gas ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion, and said the sign­ing of the li­cences "can on­ly re­sult in in­crease in ex­plo­ration and a com­men­su­rate in­crease in oil pro­duc­tion."