Aleem Khan

Suri­name's state oil com­pa­ny Staat­solie is invit­ing T&T oil and gas com­pa­nies to in­crease their foot­print in Suri­name by look­ing at two new on­shore blocks on of­fer for joint ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion.

At an En­er­gy Cham­ber lun­cheon at Cara Suites in Clax­ton Bay yes­ter­day. Staat­solie man­ag­er for pe­tro­le­um con­tracts Marny Daal in­vit­ed lo­cal­ly op­er­at­ing en­er­gy com­pa­nies, na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al, to par­tic­i­pate in the on­go­ing off­shore bid round in her coun­try. She thanked Petrotrin and oth­er T&T-based oil and gas com­pa­nies and ser­vice providers for help­ing to bring Suri­name's bur­geon­ing oil province to where it is to­day.

"When we start­ed out in the very ear­ly stages in the 1980s, we looked very, very close­ly to see where can we learn, and Petrotrin was made our clos­est and biggest al­ly. But we've prob­a­bly out­grown them a lit­tle bit, since we've had our own re­fin­ery for the last 17 years now," she told re­porters af­ter her pre­sen­ta­tion."In­stead of send­ing it (oil) to Petrotrin, we now re­fine it at home."

Off­shore Suri­name is vir­tu­al­ly un-ex­plored, with on­ly 25 ex­plo­ration wells drilled in an area of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150,000 square kilo­me­ters, she said. Off­shore blocks 58, 59 and 60 are be­ing of­fered through a com­pet­i­tive bid round clos­ing Jan­u­ary 30, 2015. The blocks are in depths vary­ing from as shal­low as 15 me­ters to 2,250 me­ters. Pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts (PSCs) of 20-25 years will be award­ed, she said.

The on­shore of­fer­ing are Nick­erie and Com­mewi­jne, two blocks next to al­ready pro­duc­ing fields. Staat­solie man­ag­ing di­rec­tor des­ig­nate Rudolf Elias, who spoke be­fore Daal, said Suri­name pro­duces 16-17,000 bar­rels of oil per day (bopd).

Daal said Suri­name de­cid­ed to seek part­ner­ships to op­er­ate the two on­shore blocks rather than to put them out for bid. She said Staat­solie is invit­ing com­pa­nies, af­ter sign­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ments, to view al­ready avail­able da­ta on the pre­vi­ous­ly ex­plored blocks, and present pro­pos­als. She said the of­fer is ide­al for small and medi­um-sized com­pa­nies as the re­quired in­vest­ment may not be as large as that for off­shore and deep wa­ter drilling.

Elias, in his pre­sen­ta­tion, fo­cused on Staat­solie's Re­fin­ery Ex­pan­sion Project (REP), and spoke about op­por­tu­ni­ties from the US$900 mil­lion up­grade for lo­cal ser­vice and equip­ment providers. He fore­cast the re­fin­ery will gen­er­ate US$100 mil­lion per year in ad­di­tion­al cash in­come for Staat­solie up­on com­ple­tion."This will mean US$50 mil­lion ad­di­tion­al in­come per year for the state," Elias said.

He said the ex­pan­sion project, con­ceived in 2004, was 87 per cent com­plete as at Au­gust 5. He said 7.5 mil­lion man hours have been worked at the site, with 5 mil­lion of those free of loss time in­ci­dents.The new re­fin­ery will pro­duce diesel in ad­di­tion to gaso­line, he said. Some of the diesel will be ex­port­ed to French Guiana and pos­si­bly Mar­tinique, and Guade­loupe, he said. A sug­ar to ethanol plant is al­so in­clud­ed.

Suri­name has 92.5 mil­lion bar­rels of proven re­serves of oil (bbls), and 17.1 mil­lion bbls of prob­a­ble re­serves, Elias said.