The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny has ac­quired Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s Non-Op­er­at­ed Joint Ven­ture (NO­JV) par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est in Block 3(a), off Trinidad’s east coast.

NGC an­nounced the ac­qui­si­tion in a press re­lease post­ed to its web­site.

NGC said this move will in­crease its par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est in the block from 11.41% to 31.54%.

The com­pa­ny al­so stat­ed as a re­sult of the deal it will now have ac­cess to ad­di­tion­al eq­ui­ty crude, which will bol­ster its mar­ket­ing and trad­ing port­fo­lio.

In Ju­ly 2020, NGC pre­vi­ous­ly ex­e­cut­ed a Gas Sales Con­tract with BHP to pur­chase 100% of the gas pro­duced from Block 3(a) to add to its ex­ist­ing port­fo­lio of nat­ur­al gas sup­ply.

NGC’s Pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan said, “NGC con­tin­ues to demon­strate its re­solve to deep­en par­tic­i­pa­tion in the do­mes­tic en­er­gy sec­tor, and to ex­pand its suite of com­mer­cial in­vest­ments along the en­er­gy and nat­ur­al gas val­ue chain. Our in­creased stake in the up­stream sec­tor sig­nals our com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing val­ue for Trinidad and To­ba­go, strength­ens our po­si­tion in the up­stream and en­ables us to col­lab­o­rate more close­ly with our part­ners in that sec­tor. Through this ac­qui­si­tion, we are al­so build­ing a stronger com­mod­i­ty trad­ing port­fo­lio, di­ver­si­fy­ing our in­come stream and de­clar­ing our brand as an in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy play­er.”

Ac­cord­ing to NGC, the ac­qui­si­tion of Her­itage’s par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est in Block 3(a) will al­low the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to main­tain its in­vest­ment stake in the acreage.

NGC said the move was pos­i­tive for the coun­try “as the in­tent is to seek val­ue op­ti­mi­sa­tion from this own­er­ship and de­rive the max­i­mum fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits which will re­dound to the na­tion.”

The com­pa­ny added, “NGC is al­ready in­vest­ed in both the up­stream and down­stream sec­tors and is lever­ag­ing these in­vest­ments to in­crease the val­ue gen­er­at­ed for the coun­try from its busi­ness. This ac­qui­si­tion rep­re­sents an­oth­er step to­wards the re­al­i­sa­tion of NGC’s growth strat­e­gy, which tar­gets a greater pres­ence for the Com­pa­ny along the nat­ur­al gas val­ue chain.”

The com­pa­ny al­so stat­ed its in­ten­tion to ex­plore oth­er in­vest­ments in oth­er off­shore NO­JVS.

— Pe­ter Christo­pher