US en­er­gy gi­ant Exxon­Mo­bil’s ne­go­ti­a­tion for the award of sev­en ul­tra-deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration blocks off the coun­try’s east coast of Trinidad and To­ba­go is a done deal, ac­cord­ing to an in­ter­na­tion­al news re­port.

In­ter­na­tion­al new agency Reuters said Exxon­Mo­bil fi­nalised terms with the T&T gov­ern­ment and the agree­ment is ex­pect­ed to be for­mal­ly signed next week.

It would mark Exxon­Mo­bil’s re­turn to Trinida­di­an wa­ters af­ter an ab­sence of two decades.

The re­port stat­ed, “The new­ly des­ig­nat­ed area, re­named Ul­tra Deep 1 (UD1), en­com­pass­es wa­ter depths rang­ing from 2,000 to 3,000 me­ters and is sit­u­at­ed north­west of Exxon­Mo­bil’s pro­lif­ic Stabroek block in Guyana, where the com­pa­ny and its con­sor­tium part­ners have dis­cov­ered over 11 bil­lion bar­rels of re­cov­er­able oil and gas re­sources.”

A 2024 study by Hous­ton-based en­er­gy an­a­lyt­ics firm TGS cit­ed a sug­ges­tion that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ul­tra-deep­wa­ter re­serves could hold po­ten­tial com­pa­ra­ble to the Stabroek block.

The re­port ex­plained, “Exxon­Mo­bil has com­mit­ted to a struc­tured three-phase ex­plo­ration pro­gramme, in­clud­ing seis­mic da­ta ac­qui­si­tion and ex­plorato­ry drilling. Should com­mer­cial dis­cov­er­ies be made, the agree­ment stip­u­lates roy­al­ty pay­ments, prof­it-shar­ing with the gov­ern­ment, and pro­vi­sions for cost re­cov­ery.”

When con­tact­ed for com­ment on the news agency’s re­port, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said, “We are en­gaged with sev­er­al oil ma­jors on ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion.”

He did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to an­oth­er ques­tion from Guardian Me­dia ask­ing whether there is go­ing to be a com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process for the ul­tra-deep­wa­ter block, as re­quired by sec­tion 10 of the Pe­tro­le­um Act.

That sec­tion of the Pe­tro­le­um Act states, “The Pres­i­dent may de­ter­mine that the grant of li­cences re­spect­ing any pub­lic pe­tro­le­um rights, or the en­try in­to pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts with­in the mean­ing of sec­tion 6, shall be sub­ject to a pro­ce­dure of com­pet­i­tive bid­ding in ac­cor­dance with the reg­u­la­tions.”

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young said he pre­ferred not to com­ment of­fi­cial­ly. But on Ju­ly 22, Young said on X, “The dis­cus­sions and ne­go­ti­a­tions for the ul­tra deep­wa­ter blocks in T&T be­gan un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. The pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts’ terms were ne­go­ti­at­ed pri­or to April 28, 2025.”

The Reuters re­port stat­ed the move aligns with Exxon­Mo­bil’s strat­e­gy to re­plen­ish re­serves through tar­get­ed ex­plo­ration. CEO Dar­ren Woods em­pha­sised this ap­proach in a re­cent press brief­ing, stat­ing, “We main­tain a con­sis­tent fo­cus on se­cur­ing eco­nom­i­cal­ly com­pet­i­tive re­sources to sus­tain our pro­duc­tion port­fo­lio.”

The com­pa­ny’s re­cent suc­cess­es in Guyana un­der­score its deep­wa­ter ex­per­tise. Exxon­Mo­bil and its part­ners, Chevron and CNOOC, are prepar­ing to com­mence pro­duc­tion at their fourth float­ing pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty in Guyana, boost­ing out­put be­yond 900,000 bar­rels per day (bpd). The con­sor­tium aims to reach 1.7 mil­lion bpd by 2030.

The news agency said Exxon­Mo­bil ini­tial­ly ex­pressed in­ter­est in the sev­en blocks in No­vem­ber 2024, prompt­ing di­rect ne­go­ti­a­tions un­der Trinida­di­an law, which per­mits in­di­vid­ual agree­ments for ar­eas not in­clud­ed in com­pet­i­tive bid­ding rounds. The coun­try’s on­go­ing deep­wa­ter auc­tion, ex­tend­ed un­til Sep­tem­ber 17, re­mains open to ad­di­tion­al par­tic­i­pants.

This agree­ment rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step in T&T’s ef­forts to re­vi­talise its en­er­gy sec­tor amid de­clin­ing hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­tion. If suc­cess­ful, the ul­tra-deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration could po­si­tion the coun­try as a key play­er in the At­lantic Basin’s en­er­gy land­scape.