Aleem Khan

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, BHP Bil­li­ton, Chaoyang Pe­tro­le­um and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC) signed an ex­ten­sion to the block 2(c) pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract on Tues­day at the min­istry's head of­fice at the Port-of-Spain In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre.

"With this amend­ment, the con­tract term has been ex­tend­ed for a five-year pe­ri­od from April 22, 2021-2026. The ini­tial pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract which was signed on April 22, 1996, pro­vid­ed for an ex­plo­ration pe­ri­od of six years and up­on com­mer­cial dis­cov­ery, a term of 25 years from the ef­fec­tive date of the con­tract.

"As such, the com­mer­cial dis­cov­ery of the An­gos­tu­ra Field in 1999 pro­vid­ed for the con­tract term to be ex­tend­ed to 25 years end­ing on April 21, 2021. This con­tract al­so pro­vid­ed for an ex­ten­sion of the term for a fur­ther five years should com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion re­main pos­si­ble be­yond the term," a state­ment from the min­istry said.

The state­ment said the ex­ten­sion comes in the wake of a pro­pos­al by BHB Bil­li­ton, the op­er­a­tor, "to un­der­take the An­gos­tu­ra Phase 3 De­vel­op­ment Project at an es­ti­mat­ed in­vest­ment of US$400 mil­lion. This project is ex­pect­ed to re­sult in an ad­di­tion­al crude oil pro­duc­tion of 2.8 mil­lion bar­rels and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 400-500 bil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas that would boost the coun­try's sup­ply avail­abil­i­ty.

"The new sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas from this project (app 100m stan­dard cu­bit feet of gas per day by the year 2016) will serve to fur­ther ben­e­fit the coun­try by en­hanc­ing se­cu­ri­ty of sup­plies."