The Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion (Pub­lic Pe­tro­le­um Rights) Li­cence for the Rio Claro block has been grant­ed to Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC) E&P In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed and Primera Oil and Gas, a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration Inc.

The Rio Claro block is sit­u­at­ed in the wards of Charu­ma, Co­cal, Or­toire and Guayagua­yare

This was an­nounced by the Min­istry of En­er­gy yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the min­istry’s In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Head-Of­fice, Port-of-Spain.

It said the Rio Claro Block is an on­shore block neigh­bour­ing the Cas­cadu­ra Gas De­vel­op­ment in the Or­toire Block, which is al­so op­er­at­ed by Primera Oil and Gas Lim­it­ed and pro­ject­ed to yield sig­nif­i­cant gas pro­duc­tion.

In June 2024, Primera Oil and Gas and NGC E&P In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed were grant­ed the Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion li­cences in re­spect of the Charu­ma and Cipero Blocks aris­ing out of the 2022 On­shore and Nearshore Com­pet­i­tive Bid Round.

No­tably, the min­istry stat­ed Rio Claro Block is bound­ed to the north by the Charu­ma Block and to the south by the Or­toire Block.

The key pro­vi­sions of the Rio Claro li­cence are the fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions to the State and the work pro­gramme to be un­der­tak­en by the li­censee.

It not­ed the fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions in­clude bonus­es, min­i­mum pay­ments and an­nu­al sur­face rent.

At the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young stat­ed, “As we en­gage in on­go­ing ex­plo­ration of on­shore, shal­low, and deep-wa­ter re­gions, we must sus­tain our part­ner­ships with our up­stream op­er­a­tors to ad­vance the de­vel­op­ment of our hy­dro­car­bon re­sources and fos­ter a com­pet­i­tive fis­cal land­scape that en­cour­ages in­vest­ment. The E&P Li­cence be­ing signed re­flects our ac­knowl­edg­ment of the ne­ces­si­ty to main­tain com­pet­i­tive­ness to draw in in­vest­ment.”

Mean­while, Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration, the Cana­di­an en­er­gy com­pa­ny, has an­nounced ini­tial pro­duc­tion from the Cas­cadu­ra C well pad.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the com­pa­ny com­mis­sioned the flow­line con­nect­ing the Cas­cadu­ra C sur­face lo­ca­tion to the Cas­cadu­ra nat­ur­al gas pro­cess­ing plant, which ties in­to the Cas­cadu­ra-2ST1 and Cas­cadu­ra-3ST1 wells.

It not­ed that a new nat­ur­al gas sep­a­ra­tor has been in­stalled and brought on­line, ex­pand­ing the plant's gross nat­ur­al gas pro­cess­ing ca­pac­i­ty to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 140 mil­lion cu­bic feet per day.

Com­ment­ing on this de­vel­op­ment, the com­pa­ny's Pres­i­dent and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Paul Baay, said the com­mence­ment of pro­duc­tion from the Cas­cadu­ra C pad marked a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone as test­ed vol­umes from these wells be­gan gen­er­at­ing rev­enue.