GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

It is no se­cret that this coun­try’s pro­duc­tion lev­els of oil and nat­ur­al gas are not where they ought to be.

As such, con­tin­ued ex­plo­ration on land, shal­low wa­ter and par­tic­u­lar­ly in T&T’s deep­wa­ter province, is the key to main­tain­ing this coun­try’s “world-class en­er­gy sec­tor,” said En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

He made the com­ments at yes­ter­day’s sign­ing of the Deep­wa­ter Pro­duc­tion Shar­ing Con­tracts for blocks 25(a), 25(b) and 27, lo­cat­ed off Trinidad’s east coast, to a con­sor­tium com­pris­ing BP Ex­plo­ration Op­er­at­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd and BG In­ter­na­tion­al Ltd (Shell).

The event took place at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

Young said this coun­try aims to main­tain an ac­tive up­stream sec­tor as it is im­per­a­tive to its fu­ture sus­tain­abil­i­ty and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

“We have had sig­nif­i­cant ex­plo­ration in both the on­shore and shal­low wa­ter provinces but there is a large area of our deep­wa­ter province that is un­ex­plored. This will be ad­dressed through bid-rounds.

“The pos­i­tive ef­fects on re­serve re­place­ment will re­sult in in­creased up­stream ac­tiv­i­ty, which then boosts in­vestor’s con­fi­dence in the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to pur­sue down­stream projects. It is no se­cret that the lev­els of pe­tro­le­um pro­duc­tion in the coun­try are not where we would like them to be. As such, con­tin­ued ex­plo­ration on land, shal­low wa­ter and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the coun­try’s deep­wa­ter province, is the key to main­tain­ing our world class en­er­gy sec­tor,” the min­is­ter ex­plained.

He not­ed that glob­al­ly, deep­wa­ter pro­duc­tion is ex­pect­ed to climb to 17 mil­lion bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent per day in 2030.

Young re­it­er­at­ed that T&T has the po­ten­tial to be a sig­nif­i­cant deep­wa­ter play­er.

“In this re­gard, we will con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate with world-class up­stream op­er­a­tors to op­ti­mise the de­vel­op­ment of our hy­dro­car­bon province and to pro­vide a com­pet­i­tive fis­cal en­vi­ron­ment that en­cour­ages in­vest­ment.

“The PSCs we are sign­ing here to­day (yes­ter­day) are al­so the re­sult of the recog­ni­tion of the im­por­tance of re­main­ing com­pet­i­tive to at­tract in­vest­ment. From the in­cep­tion of this bid round process, we were faced with the ris­ing eco­nom­ic costs of up­stream oil and gas projects and an un­cer­tain glob­al en­er­gy mar­ket,” he fur­ther stat­ed.

The min­is­ter al­so not­ed that to stim­u­late fur­ther in­ter­est from up­stream in­vestors, fis­cal in­cen­tives as out­lined by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance in the 2023 bud­get state­ment were ap­proved and im­ple­ment­ed by Gov­ern­ment.

In a joint state­ment, bpTT and Shell said they will each own 50 per cent of the three blocks. The en­er­gy com­pa­nies in­di­cat­ed bpTT will op­er­ate Blocks 25(a) and 25(b) and Shell will op­er­ate Block 27.

David Camp­bell, pres­i­dent of bpTT said: “For more than four decades bpTT has been op­er­at­ing off Trinidad’s east coast and the deep­wa­ter rep­re­sents the next ma­jor province for this coun­try’s in­dige­nous en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment. We are look­ing for­ward to this ex­cit­ing new era of ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion in the deep­wa­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go com­bin­ing our knowl­edge of the coun­try’s ge­o­log­i­cal sys­tems and our glob­al deep­wa­ter ex­per­tise.”

Eu­gene Okpere, Shell T&T’s se­nior vice pres­i­dent and coun­try chair, said: “This acreage rep­re­sents the next phase of ex­plo­ration for the Coun­try, and we are keen to lever­age our vast glob­al Deep­wa­ter ex­pe­ri­ence in this new de­vel­op­ment. To­geth­er with bpTT, we will be bet­ter than the sum of our parts, merg­ing our tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial know-how to build val­ue to­day, to­mor­row and in the fu­ture for Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The bid pro­pos­als were re­viewed by a tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee and an overview com­mit­tee es­tab­lished by Cab­i­net and com­prised of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

The re­ports and rec­om­men­da­tions of these com­mit­tees were then sub­mit­ted for Cab­i­net’s ap­proval.

Aris­ing from this process, Young said Cab­i­net au­tho­rised ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the con­sor­tium and the Min­istry of En­er­gy to seek im­proved fis­cal and tech­ni­cal terms to the PSCs.