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Friday, May 30, 2025

T&T launches shallow water bid round

by

603 days ago
20231005
Minister of Energy Stuart Young, left, speaks to Heritage CEO Erik Keskula, after the launch of the 2023 Shallow Water Competitive Bid Round at Building D, International Waterfront Complex, Wrightson Road,  Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Minister of Energy Stuart Young, left, speaks to Heritage CEO Erik Keskula, after the launch of the 2023 Shallow Water Competitive Bid Round at Building D, International Waterfront Complex, Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

VASHTI SINGH

The Min­istry of En­er­gy yes­ter­day launched the 2023 Shal­low Wa­ter Com­pet­i­tive Bid Round, by invit­ing bids for 13 blocks in ma­rine ar­eas of the north, south east and west coasts of Trinidad.

The bid round will be open for six months, with the dead­line for sub­mis­sions be­ing April 2nd, 2024 at 12 noon. Gov­ern­ment in­tends to an­nounce suc­cess­ful bid­ders by Au­gust 2024, and ex­pects to ex­e­cute the Pro­duc­tion Shar­ing Con­tracts (PSC) by Sep­tem­ber 2024.

The blocks are to be of­fered via PSC with the Min­is­ter’s share of prof­it pe­tro­le­um and the min­i­mum work oblig­a­tions as bid­d­a­ble items.

The 13 blocks be­ing of­fered are: Block 1(b), Block 2(ab), Block 2(d), Block 21, Block 22(a), Block 22(b), Block 4(c), Guayagua­yare (Off­shore) Block, Block Low­er Re­verse L, Block Mod­i­fied U(c), Block NC­MA 2, Block NC­MA 3 and Block NC­MA 4(a), lo­cat­ed in the shal­low wa­ter area off the coasts of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ad­dress­ing the launch of the bid round, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the to­tal un­risked re­source es­ti­mate of these blocks is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 13.4 tril­lion cu­bic feet. Un­risked oil and gas re­sources are de­rived from the arith­metic sum of in­di­vid­ual prospects be­fore the ap­pli­ca­tion of chance of ge­o­log­i­cal suc­cess fac­tor, ac­cord­ing to a de­f­i­n­i­tion by Law In­sid­er.

“The Shal­low Wa­ter Com­pet­i­tive Bid Round 2023 demon­strates the gov­ern­ment’s on­go­ing com­mit­ment to the fur­ther ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment of our hy­dro­car­bon re­sources in a time­ly man­ner,” Young said..

Not­ing that the last Shal­low Wa­ter Bid Round held in 2018 had a dis­ap­point­ing out­come, the En­er­gy Min­is­ter said as re­sult, the Min­istry con­duct­ed a se­ries of stake­hold­er en­gage­ments and then em­barked on an in­ter­nal re­view of its bid round process as well as the fis­cal terms and con­di­tions. That re­view yield­ed the re­moval of pre-bid fees, re­duced bid fees and the pro­vi­sion of favourable fis­cal in­cen­tives.

He said among the in­cen­tives in the mod­el PSC for the 13 blocks are fis­cal sta­bil­i­ty via a ring-fenced pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract and cost re­cov­ery up to 60 per cent. The Gov­ern­ment is al­so re­quired to pay tax­es and roy­al­ties on be­half of the con­trac­tor out of the Gov­ern­ment’s share of en­er­gy prof­its.

He said dur­ing the time that the bid round will be open, the Min­istry of En­er­gy plans to ex­e­cute in­ter­na­tion­al pro­mo­tions and road­shows show­cas­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s shal­low wa­ter acreage.

“I have al­so tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage with some of the en­er­gy stake­hold­ers with in­ter­ests in Trinidad and To­ba­go - BP, Shell, EOG, Wood­side, Touch­tone and Peren­co. All were re­cep­tive to our dis­cus­sions and reaf­firmed their com­mit­ment to con­tin­ued ac­tiv­i­ty in up­stream op­er­a­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Young.


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