Cana­di­an Out­fit Touch­stone En­er­gy could bid on as many as three of the eleven blocks of­fered by the Min­istry of En­er­gy in is on­shore/nearshore 2022 com­pet­i­tive bid round.

Paul Baay, the com­pa­ny’s Pres­i­dent and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer told the Busi­ness Guardian (BG) on Mon­day that his com­pa­ny was ex­cit­ed by the on­land prospects and will def­i­nite­ly bid.

“With the suc­cess we got at Co­ho and Cas­cadu­ra and at Roys­ton, there is no ques­tion we’ve got lots of in­ter­est from our side in some of those blocks. We are for sure. The parcels came out a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from what we thought they would be, that’s one thing that has changed a lit­tle bit, but we will be def­i­nite­ly look­ing at quite frankly two or three of them for sure.”Touch­stone’s CEO told the BG.

He was al­so full of praise for the process and the qual­i­ty of the seis­mic made avail­able to the com­pa­nies.

“It’s prob­a­bly the best pack­age we have ever seen in Trinidad. Like the da­ta that’s avail­able, ease of ac­cess, it’s the best pack­age we have ever seen so it re­al­ly helps to fine-tune the bid for sure.” Baay ex­plained.

This is good news for the Min­istry of En­er­gy and the coun­try as it could mean fur­ther in­ter­est in blocks from com­pa­nies look­ing for oil and gas on­shore. If the bid round is suc­cess­ful it would mean more ac­tiv­i­ty on­land in­clud­ing more seis­mic work, drilling and hope­ful­ly pro­duc­tion.

Touch­stone’s in­ter­est and the suc­cess of the on­shore bid round could be built around Touch­stone’s own suc­cess in the Cas­cadu­ra and Roys­ton dis­cov­er­ies in which the com­pa­ny has said it made ma­jor gas and oil dis­cov­er­ies.

On­ly on Mon­day Touch­stone start­ed pro­duc­ing from its Co­ho dis­cov­ery.

It an­nounced that the Co­ho fa­cil­i­ty de­liv­ered first gas, rep­re­sent­ing the first on­shore nat­ur­al gas project to come on­stream in Trinidad and To­ba­go in over twen­ty years.

The Co­ho area is lo­cat­ed in the Or­toire block, where Touch­stone has an 80 per­cent op­er­at­ing work­ing in­ter­est and state-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed holds the re­main­ing 20 per­cent work­ing in­ter­est.

On Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022, the Co­ho fa­cil­i­ty was ap­proved by the Cer­ti­fied Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Agent with the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries au­tho­riz­ing fa­cil­i­ty com­mis­sion­ing. On Sep­tem­ber 27, 2022, Touch­stone com­menced com­mis­sion­ing and achieved com­mer­cial de­liv­er­ies on Oc­to­ber 10, 2022, with a field es­ti­mat­ed sus­tained gross pro­duc­tion rate of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10.5 mil­lion cu­bic feet per day.

Touch­stone said it will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the Co­ho-1 well in an ef­fort to op­ti­mize pro­duc­tion. In con­junc­tion with ini­tial pro­duc­tion, the com­pa­ny said it has al­so sold the 2.7-kilo­me­tre, 6-inch gath­er­ing line ty­ing in its Co­ho fa­cil­i­ty to the Bara­ka nat­ur­al gas fa­cil­i­ty to The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (“NGC”).

Nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion from the Co­ho fa­cil­i­ty will be sold to NGC pur­suant to a nat­ur­al gas sales agree­ment ex­e­cut­ed

in De­cem­ber 2020.

Baay said:”This is very ex­cit­ing for the Com­pa­ny, as Co­ho pro­duc­tion rep­re­sents the first stage of di­ver­si­fy­ing our prod­uct mix in Trinidad. The Co­ho fa­cil­i­ty is ca­pa­ble of 24 mil­lion cu­bic feet of gross nat­ur­al gas per day,giv­ing us the abil­i­ty to po­ten­tial­ly add in­cre­men­tal pro­duc­tion vol­umes through a com­bi­na­tion of ad­di­tion­al drilling and well op­ti­miza­tion. I would al­so like to rec­og­nize the col­lec­tive con­tri­bu­tions of our team in mak­ing this project a suc­cess. Be­ing the first on­shore gas project in over twen­ty years, we have learnt from the

process, which we ex­pect will pro­vide a strong foun­da­tion for con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment as we pro­ceed with

our larg­er Cas­cadu­ra project.”

On Ju­ly 11th the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries launched its on­shore/nearshore 2022 com­pet­i­tive bid round.

The blocks in­clud­ed Aripero, Buenos Ayres, Charu­ma, Cipero, Cory D, Cory F, Guayagua­yare, St Mary’s, South West Penin­su­la On­shore, South West Penin­su­la Off­shore and Tul­sa.

Kim­ber­lee Lon­don, Se­nior Ge­ol­o­gist at the Min­istry gave de­tails of the blocks at the Sev­enth Con­fer­ence of the Ge­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T 2022 held at the Hy­att Re­gency and said bids will be open for six months, with the dead­line for sub­mis­sions be­ing Jan­u­ary 2023.

The blocks are ex­pect­ed to be award­ed in April 2023, three months af­ter the close of the bid round.

In de­tail­ing a sum­ma­ry of the process Lon­don ex­plained that prospec­tive bid­ders must pay a bid fee of US$30,000 or the equiv­a­lent $TT pri­or to the close of bids.

She said Clause Five was amend­ed to al­low pay­ment in lo­cal cur­ren­cy as con­cerns were raised by some on­shore op­er­a­tions.

This fee en­ti­tles the bid­der to re­ceive the da­ta pack­age and the right to bid on any or all of the blocks.

Each bid con­tains pro­pos­als in tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial eval­u­a­tion of the block, min­i­mum work pro­gramme, min­i­mum ex­pen­di­ture oblig­a­tion and sig­na­ture bonus.

She said bids should be sub­mit­ted un­der con­fi­den­tial cov­er to the Of­fice of the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries by 12 noon on the dead­line date.

All bid­ders are re­quired to de­liv­er an oral pre­sen­ta­tion in sup­port of their tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial eval­u­a­tions to the rel­e­vant min­istry per­son­nel.

Suc­cess­ful bid­ders shall ex­e­cute an Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion Li­cense with the state with­in 30 days of no­ti­fi­ca­tion of their suc­cess­ful bid.

The de­ci­sion pro­ceed with E&P li­cense was made be­cause of lega­cy li­cens­es and the chal­lenge of hav­ing a Pro­duc­tion Shar­ing Con­tract (PSC) on land Lon­don ex­plained.

Touch­stone’s in­ter­est would be a wel­come change from what has hap­pened re­cent­ly with the gov­ern­ment’s 2022 deep wa­ter bid round at­tract­ing lit­tle in­ter­est as well as its shal­low wa­ter bid round which failed.

More about Touch­stone:

.

Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration Inc. is a Cal­gary, Al­ber­ta based com­pa­ny en­gaged in the busi­ness of ac­quir­ing

in­ter­ests in pe­tro­le­um and nat­ur­al gas rights and the ex­plo­ration, de­vel­op­ment, pro­duc­tion and sale of

pe­tro­le­um and nat­ur­al gas. Touch­stone is cur­rent­ly ac­tive in on­shore prop­er­ties lo­cat­ed in

Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Com­pa­ny’s com­mon shares are trad­ed on the Toron­to Stock Ex­change and the

AIM mar­ket of the Lon­don Stock Ex­change .