Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Ernesto Ke­sar is urg­ing greater in­vest­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s deep­wa­ter and ul­tra-deep­wa­ter acreage, as the coun­try seeks to re­plen­ish its hy­dro­car­bon re­serves and se­cure the fu­ture of its en­er­gy sec­tor.

Open­ing the Sec­ond EAGE Con­fer­ence on En­er­gy Op­por­tu­ni­ties in the Caribbean yes­ter­day, Ke­sar point­ed to the coun­try’s sig­nif­i­cant hy­dro­car­bon po­ten­tial and the need to ac­cel­er­ate ex­plo­ration to sus­tain pro­duc­tion over the long term.

He iden­ti­fied seis­mic imag­ing and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence as im­por­tant tools in un­lock­ing new ex­plo­ration op­por­tu­ni­ties, while point­ing to con­tin­ued in­ter­est from ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies.

Exxon­Mo­bil and the BP-Shell con­sor­tium are con­duct­ing seis­mic ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ties in T&T’s deep­wa­ter acreage.

The con­fer­ence, or­gan­ised by the Eu­ro­pean As­so­ci­a­tion of Geo­sci­en­tists and En­gi­neers (EAGE) and host­ed by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, brings to­geth­er gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, en­er­gy com­pa­nies, geo­sci­en­tists, tech­ni­cal ex­perts and in­vestors to ex­am­ine the re­gion’s en­er­gy prospects.

Ke­sar al­so point­ed to the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing a com­pet­i­tive and pre­dictable in­vest­ment en­vi­ron­ment to at­tract cap­i­tal in­to the sec­tor.

He called for stronger en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion across the Caribbean, iden­ti­fy­ing Guyana, Suri­name, Grena­da and Bar­ba­dos as po­ten­tial part­ners for knowl­edge shar­ing, tech­ni­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion and en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment.

The min­is­ter urged gov­ern­ments, in­dus­try play­ers and tech­ni­cal pro­fes­sion­als to work to­geth­er to en­sure the re­gion’s en­er­gy re­sources gen­er­ate sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits.

The con­fer­ence con­tin­ues un­til Fri­day, with dis­cus­sions cov­er­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas ex­plo­ration, in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, ad­vances in geo­science, seis­mic sur­veys, sub­sur­face imag­ing and reser­voir de­vel­op­ment.

Par­tic­i­pants will al­so ex­am­ine emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies that could im­prove ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion, along­side op­por­tu­ni­ties aris­ing from the en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

The sec­ond edi­tion builds on the in­au­gur­al con­fer­ence, pro­vid­ing a re­gion­al plat­form for in­vestors, op­er­a­tors and tech­ni­cal spe­cial­ists to as­sess op­por­tu­ni­ties in Caribbean en­er­gy ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion.