T&T's Min­istry of En­er­gy yes­ter­day an­nounced the award of blocks North Coast Ma­rine Area NC­MA 4(a) and Low­er Re­verse L have been award­ed to EOG Re­sources Trinidad.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young signed the two pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts (PSCs) with EOG Re­sources.

The min­istry said the award of these PSCs stems from the Shal­low Wa­ter Com­pet­i­tive Bid Round 2023/2024, which opened on Oc­to­ber 2, 2023, and closed on  May 27, 2024.  

It said in the bid round, en­er­gy com­pa­nies were in­vit­ed to sub­mit bids for shal­low wa­ter blocks off the north, east and west coasts of Trinidad and the west coast of To­ba­go.

At the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Young said, “EOG Re­sources con­tin­ues to be very im­por­tant to the fab­ric of the en­er­gy sec­tor. We saw through the re­sults of the Shal­low Wa­ter Bid Round and the op­er­a­tors are in­vest­ed in T&T. We at the min­istry have to con­tin­ue to en­sure the re­la­tion­ship is as we have built it to be, with open com­mu­ni­ca­tion and then we pro­ceed to get more done.”

In re­sponse, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of EOG Re­sources Trinidad, George Viera said, “We ap­pre­ci­ate all of the hard work that went in­to get­ting this done prompt­ly. The last time we signed a PSC was in 2005 so it has been a while, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 years ago and we are ex­cit­ed to get this go­ing.”

The ex­e­cu­tion of these PSCs, the min­istry said, not on­ly sig­ni­fies the po­ten­tial for in­creas­ing the hy­dro­car­bon re­serves but al­so en­sures lo­cal de­vel­op­ment and eco­nom­ic growth through the pay­ment of fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions by EOG to the gov­ern­ment for re­search and de­vel­op­ment, train­ing of na­tion­als and schol­ar­ships.  

EOG sub­mit­ted bids for three (3) Blocks: (i) NC­MA 4(a); (ii) Mod­i­fied U(c); (iii) and Low­er Re­verse L.  

These bids were eval­u­at­ed by the Cab­i­net and EOG was the pre­ferred bid­der.  

Block NC­MA 4(a) is sit­u­at­ed in the North Coast Ma­rine Area (NC­MA) in wa­ter depths of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100-200 m.  

Fur­ther, the min­istry said en­try in­to NC­MA marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for EOG, as it ven­tures in­to an area pre­dom­i­nant­ly op­er­at­ed by oth­er com­pa­nies.

Block Low­er Re­verse L is sit­u­at­ed off the South East Coast of Trinidad in wa­ter depths of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80-200 m. It is near the ex­ist­ing EOGRTL in­fra­struc­ture and ex­ist­ing pro­duc­ing as­sets.

From Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber 2024, EOG's pro­duc­tion of crude oil and con­den­sate av­er­aged 1,264 bar­rels of oil per day, while for the same pe­ri­od, EOG pro­duced an av­er­age of 338 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day of nat­ur­al gas.