Trinidad and To­ba­go and Bar­ba­dos yes­ter­day signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing on en­er­gy co-op­er­a­tion which is the first step in joint­ly de­vel­op­ing any oil or gas that may strad­dle the is­lands shared bor­ders.

It is ex­pect­ed to al­so fa­cil­i­tate deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration near the mar­itime bound­aries of both coun­tries. The sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny was wit­nessed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Amor Mot­t­ley.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence held af­ter the sign­ing, Row­ley said BHP re­cent­ly made some gas dis­cov­er­ies in the north-east­ern part of TT’s mar­itime acreage which bor­ders Bar­ba­dos.

“The doc­u­ment is a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween gov­ern­ments. It is a non-bind­ing doc­u­ment, a com­mit­ment to co­op­er­ate in en­er­gy ex­plo­ration in the off­shore ter­ri­to­ries. T&T has a long his­to­ry in the (ex­plo­ration) and pro­duc­tion of hy­dro­car­bons, main­ly oil in ear­ly days. Our econ­o­my is large­ly dri­ven by gas and we are look­ing for that gas in deep wa­ters off­shore. As we go fur­ther in the deep­wa­ter of the At­lantic Ocean we are in Block 14 which is 85 miles off our east coast and is on the bound­ary of Bar­ba­dos,” Row­ley ex­plained.

He added: “Our seis­mic work has en­cour­aged ex­plo­ration on the bor­der and we have been do­ing ex­plorato­ry drilling and the first set of wells have been suc­cess­ful, so we do have the po­ten­tial and across the line from the bor­der, the same po­ten­tial holds out.” Row­ley said ex­plo­ration on Bar­ba­dos’s bound­ary re­quires a le­gal frame­work to at­tract in­vest­ment. He said if Bar­ba­dos finds hy­dro­car­bons which are very like­ly, T&T will of­fer a mar­ket and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to mon­e­tise the hy­dro­car­bons.

“Our off­shore in­fra­struc­ture com­ing so close to Bar­ba­dos will give Bar­ba­dos acreage an at­trac­tion be­cause you are close to the in­fra­struc­ture that takes the gas to mar­ket. Now is the time that T&T and Bar­ba­dos should lay the ground­work to en­sure the in­vestors get to the stage of ex­plo­ration.” Row­ley said the MOU al­lows both coun­tries to co­op­er­ate in lay­ing the ground­work for the two coun­tries to act as one in off­shore deep wa­ter. If the seis­mic stud­ies show po­ten­tial for off­shore drilling on the Bar­ba­dos mar­itime space, Row­ley said a treaty will be signed to al­low the op­er­a­tors to ex­tract.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was hop­ing that Bar­ba­dos would be a pro­duc­er and ex­porter of gas to the plants in Point Lisas and T&T. When asked how the MoU will im­pact on the 2006 rul­ing of the bor­der dis­pute be­tween the two coun­tries, Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley said it was be­cause of the 2006 rul­ing that this treaty of co­op­er­a­tion could be signed.

“If you look at the agree­ment, ar­ti­cle four speaks about con­clud­ing arrange­ments for trans­bound­ary re­serves. You can on­ly have that if you have a bound­ary. The 2006 ac­tion was peace­ful, civ­il and co­op­er­a­tive,” she said. Row­ley re­vealed that two blocks were award­ed to BHP.

“No com­pa­ny will be seek­ing to in­vest if there was a dis­pute be­tween T&T and Bar­ba­dos. We are re­mov­ing the is­sue of bound­aries and set­tling it with clar­i­ty so we can work with a third par­ty and let the arrange­ment work for us,” Row­ley added.