With­in the next two weeks, the Gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to make a de­ci­sion on which com­pa­nies will be award­ed the deep­wa­ter blocks. Cab­i­net sources told the Busi­ness Guardian that the de­ci­sion will be made by the Cab­i­net at lat­est dur­ing its meet­ing on Ju­ly 21. The move to fi­nal­ly sign off on the blocks comes less than two weeks af­ter for­mer En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan was con­tro­ver­sial­ly re­placed by Kevin Ram­nar­ine and af­ter months of fail­ure of the stand­ing com­mit­tee-chaired by the Prime Min­is­ter-to meet. At the time of the close of the bid round, Seep­er­sad-Bachan ar­gued that the clo­sure of the bid round will go a long way in meet­ing the Gov­ern­ment's goal of a con­tin­u­ous ex­plo­ration pro­gramme over the next five years.

On­ly re­cent­ly, He­le­na In­niss-King, the min­istry's di­rec­tor of re­source man­age­ment, ex­plained that the three-month de­lay on sign­ing off on the blocks was out­side of the hands of the tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee. In­niss-King said, "Like most Cab­i­nets, this one does not have a lot of peo­ple with a back­ground in the en­er­gy sec­tor, so de­ci­sions re­lat­ing to en­er­gy are usu­al­ly sent to the sub-com­mit­tee of the Cab­i­net and then a rec­om­men­da­tion is made to the wider Cab­i­net. Thus far, this com­mit­tee has not met be­cause of sched­ul­ing prob­lems." Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is the chair­man of the En­er­gy Sub­com­mit­tee and al­so the chair­man of the wider Cab­i­net.

In­nis-King said there are two Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed com­mit­tees which per­form the eval­u­a­tions:

• A tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee com­prised of staff of the Min­istry of En­er­gy, Fi­nance and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

• An overview com­mit­tee chaired by the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, Min­istry of En­er­gy and com­prised of of­fi­cers from the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al's De­part­ment and state com­pa­nies.

She ex­plained that the process was that the overview com­mit­tee makes rec­om­men­da­tions on the awardees to the Cab­i­net. The Cab­i­net for­wards the rec­om­men­da­tions to the stand­ing com­mit­tee on En­er­gy, that com­mit­tee makes rec­om­men­da­tions to Cab­i­net and the Cab­i­net then acts on the rec­om­men­da­tions of the stand­ing com­mit­tee on en­er­gy.

The Busi­ness Guardian has learnt that if the stand­ing com­mit­tee does not meet, there is a plan to sim­ply take it to the wider Cab­i­net.

The de­lay has led to con­cern by mem­ber of the en­er­gy sec­tor which have been ea­ger­ly await­ing the award of the first deep­wa­ter blocks in the his­to­ry of T&T and for ex­plo­ration to fi­nal­ly be­gin in an area in which it is be­lieved there may be bil­lion bar­rel oil fields. The min­istry's di­rec­tor of down­stream, Sel­wyn Lash­ley-al­so part of the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee-said the rea­son there were so many lay­ers in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process was due to the need for trans­paren­cy in the award process. In­niss-King re­vealed that the plan was to have an­oth­er bid round in the deep­wa­ter in a mat­ter of months, sug­gest­ing it might take place in Sep­tem­ber. She said there were is­sues that were raised by some of the large oil and gas com­pa­nies about the blocks on the south­ern side of Trinidad and those con­cerns are to be ad­dressed.