En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has called on com­pa­nies to move quick­ly to grow pro­duc­tion say­ing for this coun­try to ben­e­fit from im­proved en­er­gy prices, oil and gas out­put need to in­crease.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at a con­fer­ence held by the Ge­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T (GSTT), Young ar­gued the best chance for im­me­di­ate growth in oil pro­duc­tion re­sides with state-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd, the coun­try’s largest oil pro­duc­er and the largest hold­er of on­shore acreage.

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter said the com­pa­ny has ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion rights on­shore, pri­mar­i­ly lo­cat­ed in the South­ern Basin, and in its off­shore acreage in the West Coast Ma­rine Area.

The Min­is­ter re­vealed that Amer­i­can out­fit EOG Re­sources, which has a 65 per cent in­ter­est in a Block with Her­itage, and is the op­er­a­tor, has spud­ded an ex­plo­ration well and is ex­pect­ed to com­plete drilling in one month.

The farm-in area com­pris­es of 14,870 hectares over the wider Trinidad north­ern area E&P Li­cence com­pris­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 97,000 hectares.

“The first ex­plo­ration well was spud on June 10, 2022 and drilling is pro­ject­ed to be com­plet­ed in 30 days. We are look­ing for­ward to good re­sults and in­creased oil pro­duc­tion from this ven­ture,” Young told the con­fer­ence.

With re­spect to its on­shore acreage, he de­tailed that Her­itage has been fo­cus­ing on se­cur­ing a joint ven­ture part­ner for its North West Dis­trict which is lo­cat­ed with­in the west­ern seg­ment of the South­ern Basin ge­o­log­ic province.

Young not­ed that the North West Dis­trict is cov­ered by a 3D seis­mic sur­vey of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 287 sq. km, which is cur­rent­ly be­ing re­processed.

In the in­ter­im, the process for en­gag­ing a joint-ven­ture part­ner has been de­ferred pend­ing the com­ple­tion of the re­pro­cess­ing ex­er­cise, the min­is­ter said.

With re­spect to nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion, Young told the con­fer­ence this re­ceived a ma­jor boost with the start-up of BPTT’s Mat­a­pal, Shell’s Bar­racu­da and BHP Ru­by-Delaware in 2021.

He added that the mo­men­tum con­tin­ued in­to 2022 with BPTT’s Cas­sia C De­vel­op­ment and Shell’s 8 Col­ib­ri project, both of which the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion ne­go­ti­at­ed in 2018/ 2019.

Shell’s Coun­try Man­ag­er Eu­g­ine Okpere told the con­fer­ence the suc­cess of Col­ib­ri and Bar­racu­da means for the first time since 2016 Shell is pro­duc­ing more than 850 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of gas per day.

Young said that over the next five years there are projects with gas re­serves of 3.0 tcf which are ear­marked for sanc­tion­ing.

He said gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing an am­bi­tious bid-round pro­gramme that com­menced with the deep-wa­ter bid-round in June and con­tin­ued with the on­shore yes­ter­day.

The shal­low-wa­ter bid round is cur­rent­ly be­ing fi­nalised and its in­tend­ed launched be­fore the end of the year, Young told the con­fer­ence.