BpTT said yes­ter­day it has agreed to sell four ma­ture, off­shore nat­ur­al gas fields with as­so­ci­at­ed pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties to Peren­co T&T, plus a fifth field that is un­de­vel­oped.

In a news re­lease, bpTT said the four ma­ture, off­shore fields to be di­vest­ed to Peren­co are Im­mortelle, Flam­boy­ant, Amher­s­tia, and Cashima. The agree­ment al­so in­cludes the un­de­vel­oped re­sources from the Parang field.

BpTT op­er­ates and cur­rent­ly is the sole own­er of each of the as­sets, in­clud­ed in the agree­ment.

The en­er­gy com­pa­ny said its fields, ex­cept Parang, are ma­ture fields that have been in pro­duc­tion from as ear­ly as 1993 and cur­rent­ly pro­duce a to­tal of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 thou­sand bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent per day.

“As part of the deal, bpTT will pur­chase the gas pro­duced from these fields to con­tin­ue to meet its ex­ist­ing con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions.

Com­ment­ing on the de­vel­op­ment bpTT pres­i­dent David Camp­bell said: “Di­vest­ing these ma­ture as­sets will high-grade our port­fo­lio in Trinidad and To­ba­go as we fo­cus on con­tin­u­ing to de­vel­op our shal­low wa­ter gas port­fo­lio and pur­su­ing growth op­por­tu­ni­ties with both deep wa­ter and cross-bor­der gas re­sources. This is part of our mis­sion to ac­cel­er­ate gas pro­duc­tion, cre­ate val­ue, and un­lock the en­er­gy fu­ture of T&T. Mean­while, Peren­co will be able to ap­ply their ma­ture as­set ex­per­tise to ex­tend these fields’ pro­duc­ing life and sup­port max­i­mum re­cov­ery of re­sources.”

Peren­co T&T has been pro­duc­ing hy­dro­car­bons in Trinidad & To­ba­go since 2016, when it took over op­er­a­tor­ship of the Teak, Samaan, and Poui (TSP) fields, lo­cat­ed off­shore the south­east coast of Trinidad. Peren­co T&T is part of the Peren­co Group, which op­er­ates in 14 part­ner coun­tries and is based in the Unit­ed King­dom.

Peren­co’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Armel Si­mondin, said over the past eight years, the com­pa­ny has com­plet­ed sev­er­al am­bi­tious projects at the ma­ture TSP as­set and has be­come a size­able gas sup­pli­er for the do­mes­tic mar­ket.

“We will ap­ply our ma­ture field ex­per­tise to de­vel­op fur­ther the re­sources from these new­ly ac­quired fields. We look for­ward to wel­com­ing the bpTT em­ploy­ees who will trans­fer with the as­sets and are de­light­ed to work to­geth­er with bpTT to­wards pro­tect­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty. We view this as an im­por­tant mile­stone in the his­to­ry of gas sup­ply for T&T.

“Both par­ties see this as a ‘win-win’ agree­ment that sup­ports bp’s dri­ve to be­come a sim­pler, more fo­cused, and high­er val­ue com­pa­ny while en­abling Peren­co to ex­pand its foot­print in T&T, in­vest­ing in the as­sets to un­lock ad­di­tion­al gas re­serves and in­crease the pro­duc­tion po­ten­tial of the fields,” the re­lease fur­ther stat­ed.

BpTT in­di­cat­ed that this agree­ment fol­lows oth­er re­cent progress in Trinidad for the com­pa­ny: the award in 2023 of three deep­wa­ter blocks, joint­ly with Shell; its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the re­cent 2024 shal­low wa­ter bid round; the grant in Ju­ly of a li­cence for the Cocuina field in Venezuela, paving the way for the po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment of the Man­akin-Cocuina cross-bor­der gas field; and the re­cent es­tab­lish­ment of a joint ven­ture with EOG Re­sources for the de­vel­op­ment of the Co­conut field.

It not­ed that bpTT will con­tin­ue to op­er­ate the as­sets in­clud­ed in the agree­ment, an­nounced yes­ter­day, for a tran­si­tion pe­ri­od at the end of which own­er­ship and op­er­a­tor­ship of the as­sets will be trans­ferred to Peren­co T&T. The trans­ac­tion is ex­pect­ed to close by the end of 2024.

Mean­while, in a state­ment yes­ter­day, the En­er­gy Cham­ber said bpTT’s de­ci­sion to sell some of its ma­ture gas fields to Peren­co presents an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty for this coun­try to con­tin­ue to pro­duce nat­ur­al gas from these fields well in­to the fu­ture.

“In a ma­ture oil and gas province like T&T, it is im­por­tant to have a good mix of dif­fer­ent up­stream op­er­a­tor com­pa­nies, each with dif­fer­ent strengths and ca­pa­bil­i­ties. Ma­jor ex­plo­ration cam­paigns and green­field de­vel­op­ments need ma­jor multi­na­tion­al oil and gas com­pa­nies with the nec­es­sary re­sources. In the re­cent past, we have seen both Shell and bp mov­ing ag­gres­sive­ly to ex­plore the deep­wa­ter acreage and to de­vel­op ma­jor cross-bor­der gas fields,” the cham­ber added.