GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

There is good news for this coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor as Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says that T&T is ex­pect­ing gas pro­duc­tion to sta­bilise in 2023 based on projects on stream in mid-to-late 2022. These in­clude Shell’s Col­ib­ri project and bpTT’s Cas­sia com­pres­sion project.

Dur­ing the 2024 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, the min­is­ter out­lined that gas pro­duc­tion is ex­pect­ed to be boost­ed fur­ther in 2023 by bpTT’s In­fill Pro­gramme in the Man­go, Savonette and An­gelin fields, EOG Re­sources’ Os­prey West and East de­vel­op­ments and Touch­stone’s Cas­cadu­ra de­vel­op­ment on­shore.

Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert, be­tween 2024 to 2026, ad­di­tion­al projects will serve to main­tain nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion, such as de­vel­op­ing the South East Queen’s Beach field by bpTT, the Men­to field by EOG and the Aphrodite field by Shell. He added that an ex­pand­ed de­vel­op­ment of the Cas­cadu­ra field on­shore is al­so ex­pect­ed in this pe­ri­od.

“For the long term, the com­ing on stream of Shell’s Man­a­tee project is ex­pect­ed to as­sist in sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing the nat­ur­al gas deficit. Fur­ther­more, sig­nif­i­cant progress on ne­go­ti­a­tions re­gard­ing Wood­side’s Ca­lyp­so deep­wa­ter de­vel­op­ment has been made, and we are ea­ger­ly look­ing for­ward to bring­ing this project to fruition,” Im­bert said.

He said the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to main­tain the mo­men­tum of up­stream ex­plo­ration through the avail­abil­i­ty of acreage both on land and off­shore.

“We have re­cent­ly eval­u­at­ed the bids re­sult­ing from the 2021 Deep Wa­ter Com­pet­i­tive Bid Round and award­ed three deep­wa­ter blocks to a con­sor­tium of bpTT and Shell. The ma­te­r­i­al pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts have re­cent­ly been ex­e­cut­ed and es­tab­lished not on­ly a new fron­tier for our oil and gas de­vel­op­ment but al­so a foun­da­tion for the sus­tain­able flow of nat­ur­al gas,” Im­bert added.

He al­so not­ed that in 2022 the On­shore and Nearshore Com­pet­i­tive Bid Round was suc­cess­ful with the re­ceipt of 16 bids for eight of the blocks.

Ac­cord­ing to the fi­nance min­is­ter, this bid round will be fol­lowed by a Shal­low Wa­ter Bid Round of­fer­ing 26 blocks.

“We are en­cour­ag­ing up­stream in­vest­ments both off­shore and on­shore and en­sur­ing that we re­alise the op­ti­mum val­ue from ex­ploit­ing our re­main­ing hy­dro­car­bon re­sources,” Im­bert said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said that to as­sist this process, in the Fi­nance Bill 2023, he will make fur­ther ap­pro­pri­ate ad­just­ments to the Sup­ple­men­tal Pe­tro­le­um Tax regime for small oil pro­duc­ers in the shal­low wa­ter ar­eas, sim­i­lar to what the Gov­ern­ment has done for small on­shore pro­duc­ers.

“We will al­so re-ex­am­ine the cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture write-off regime to de­ter­mine what changes can be made with­out sac­ri­fic­ing too much rev­enue,” he added.