Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell says he is un­able to com­ment on the arrange­ment that Glob­al Pe­tro­le­um Group re­cent­ly signed with Nige­ria’s Ocean­gate Oil and Gas En­gi­neer­ing com­pa­ny to de­vel­op the is­land’s oil and gas re­serves.

The deal, ac­cord­ing to S&P Glob­al Com­mod­i­ty In­sights, a web­site which fo­cus­es on the glob­al en­er­gy and com­modi­ties mar­kets, is val­ued at US$1.8 bil­lion.

Asked to com­ment on the re­port­ed agree­ment, Mitchell said he could dis­close any de­tails on the mat­ter.

“I can­not speak to it be­cause if you read the ar­ti­cle you will see that nowhere in it, it speaks about the Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da, I cant speak, I have seen the ar­ti­cle just like your­self, I am not in a po­si­tion to speak on the mat­ter,” he told the night­ly Mikey Live news out­let.

But the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Ocean­gate, Dr Aisha Achimugu, says that the deal has the po­ten­tial to reach bil­lions of dol­lars as the com­pa­nies de­vel­op Grena­da’s “sig­nif­i­cant” hy­dro­car­bon re­serves.

Glob­al Pe­tro­le­um Group is an oil and gas ex­plo­ration com­pa­ny which reg­is­tered in Grena­da in 2003. Records at the Cor­po­rate Af­fairs and In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice show that it is list­ed as hav­ing 100,000,000 or­di­nary shares.

GPG has con­duct­ed ex­plo­rations in Grena­da’s off­shore blocks, but proven hy­dro­car­bon re­serves have not yet been ful­ly quan­ti­fied. A 2018 dis­cov­ery at the Nut­meg-2 well, sug­gests sig­nif­i­cant po­ten­tial. Ocean­gate’s in­volve­ment could ac­cel­er­ate the as­sess­ment and po­ten­tial pro­duc­tion of these re­sources.

The agree­ment be­tween Ocean­gate and GPG in­volves a pro­duc­tion-shar­ing arrange­ment with Grena­da’s gov­ern­ment for 38 years, cov­er­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7,500 square kilo­me­ters of off­shore zones.

When she de­liv­ered the tra­di­tion­al Throne speech at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of 2023/2024 par­lia­men­tary ses­sion, Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al, Dame Ce­cile La Grenade, said that the Mitchell ad­min­is­tra­tion, which was elect­ed in June 2022, was un­able to find doc­u­ments about the is­land oil and gas re­serves and a tech­ni­cal work­ing group would be ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter.

Gov­ern­ment is yet to pro­vide an up­date about the miss­ing doc­u­ment but a no­tice from the tech­ni­cal work­ing group pub­lished in var­i­ous edi­tions of the of­fi­cial Gazette ear­li­er in the year ad­ver­tised the po­si­tion for a le­gal con­sul­tant.

Me­dia re­ports say that Nige­ria is aim­ing to di­ver­si­fy its mar­kets for re­fined prod­ucts, es­pe­cial­ly with the start-up of the Dan­gote re­fin­ery, and with its ca­pac­i­ty of 650,000 bar­rels per day, is one of the largest in Africa.

The re­fin­ery re­cent­ly host­ed Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell to dis­cuss po­ten­tial part­ner­ships in the en­er­gy sec­tor, as well as in ce­ment and fer­til­iz­ers.

“This vis­it high­lights the pow­er of col­lab­o­ra­tion and vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship in build­ing strate­gic part­ner­ships that can fu­el sus­tain­able growth and de­vel­op­ment for Grena­da and the en­tire Caribbean re­gion,” the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter said of the mid-Oc­to­ber vis­it.

T&T, Grena­da MoU

The gov­ern­ments of T&Tand Grena­da signed an MoU to ad­vance the joint ex­plo­ration and ex­ploita­tion of hy­dro­car­bons in the mar­itime ar­eas be­tween the two coun­tries in Sep­tem­ber 2012.

The sign­ing took place be­tween En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine and Naz­im Burke, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Plan­ning, Econ­o­my, En­er­gy and Co-op­er­a­tives of Grena­da.

The agree­ment laid the foun­da­tion for a broad spec­trum of co­op­er­a­tion ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing:

(a) de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of tech­ni­cal pro­grammes, projects and ac­tiv­i­ties;

(b) con­duct of joint seis­mic sur­veys and joint ex­plo­ration;

(c) im­ple­men­ta­tion of joint de­vel­op­ment plans for the uni­ti­sa­tion of hy­dro­car­bon reser­voirs ex­ist­ing in the re­spec­tive con­ti­nen­tal shelves of both coun­tries;

(d) con­duct of joint bid rounds.

T&T’s Min­istry of En­er­gy said at the time that the MoU was first such agree­ment be­tween T&T and an­oth­er Cari­com coun­try, ex­e­cut­ed with­in a frame­work for the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment as en­vis­aged in the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, which calls for the pro­mo­tion of the de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion’s nat­ur­al re­sources on a sus­tain­able ba­sis.

Burke said the agree­ment not on­ly pro­vides for “joint co-op­er­a­tion in de­ter­min­ing our hy­dro­car­bon re­serves, ex­plo­ration and ex­ploita­tion of these re­serves for our mu­tu­al ben­e­fit,” but al­so for “skills and tech­nol­o­gy trans­fers” be­tween both Caribbean coun­tries.

NGC signs MoU with Niger­ian firm

In Ju­ly 2018, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) of Trinidad & To­ba­go fi­nalised a com­mer­cial agree­ment with the Glob­al Pe­tro­le­um Group (GPG) op­er­at­ing in Grena­da, ac­cord­ing to an ar­ti­cle in the OECS Busi­ness Fo­cus.

The agree­ment is said to mark a ma­jor de­vel­op­ment in the col­lab­o­ra­tion and en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion among Cari­com coun­tries and was called an im­por­tant pil­lar in grow­ing and strength­en­ing the re­gion’s economies.

“The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two com­pa­nies is a re­sult of the En­er­gy Sec­tor De­vel­op­ment Frame­work Agree­ment signed be­tween the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of T&T and the Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da. GPG is an oil and gas com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly un­der­tak­ing ex­plo­ration and ap­praisal ac­tiv­i­ties off the south coast of Grena­da, near the Patao/Drag­on fields in Venezuela and North Coast Ma­rine Area (NC­MA) fields in Trinidad,” the ar­ti­cle quot­ed the NGC as say­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the ar­ti­cle, NGC Chair­man Ger­ry Brooks in­di­cat­ed that with the sup­port of Gov­ern­ment, the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to work close­ly with GPG and the Grena­da Gov­ern­ment as the project pro­gress­es. “Brooks ar­tic­u­lat­ed his op­ti­mism that the frame­work agree­ment be­tween the two Gov­ern­ments will fos­ter a part­ner­ship of mu­tu­al ben­e­fit and growth op­por­tu­ni­ties for both coun­tries. The agree­ment sig­nals NGC’s un­wa­ver­ing re­solve to meet the chal­lenge of gas sup­ply in Trinidad & To­ba­go by pro­vid­ing a ready mar­ket for the sale of nat­ur­al gas and nat­ur­al gas liq­uids (NGLs),” the ar­ti­cle said.

Brooks is re­port­ed to have said that to ef­fec­tive­ly mon­e­tise any gas re­serves in the fastest pos­si­ble time, NGC will utilise ex­ist­ing do­mes­tic in­fra­struc­ture “as well as lever­age our four decades of ex­pe­ri­ence and tech­ni­cal pro­fi­cien­cy in pipeline con­struc­tion and nat­ur­al gas trans­porta­tion.”

It said too that the com­pa­ny has fa­cil­i­tat­ed nu­mer­ous ear­ly busi­ness de­vel­op­ment projects which have shaped the lo­cal nat­ur­al gas land­scape. “It is these ca­pa­bil­i­ties and ex­per­tise which NGC will utilise to as­sist GPG in de­vel­op­ing Grena­da’s nat­ur­al gas-based en­er­gy sec­tor,” the ar­ti­cle said.

The ar­ti­cle said that NGC and GPG will con­tin­ue joint stud­ies to de­ter­mine the best fit to pro­vide nat­ur­al gas-based fu­el to meet Grena­da’s do­mes­tic gas re­quire­ments “as well as, any oth­er ar­eas of mu­tu­al ben­e­fit rel­a­tive to the en­er­gy sec­tor in the re­gion.”