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.