BP has sunk US$176 mil­lion in­to the ex­plo­ration for oil and nat­ur­al gas of two blocks off the east and south coast, which were of­fered by Gov­ern­ment, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said yes­ter­day. At the week­ly post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Ram­nar­ine said BP emerged as the suc­cess­ful bid­der ahead of five oth­er par­ties in bid rounds for the two blocks 23A and TTAD 14. He de­scribed it as sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in T&T by one of the largest en­er­gy com­pa­nies.

Bids were eval­u­at­ed by a team com­pris­ing of­fi­cials of En­er­gy, the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice.

Drilling will run to 4,000 feet for Block 223A and 2,500 feet for TTAD14. Talks are in the works with oth­er par­ties for a third block - 23B, Ram­nar­ine said. Ram­nar­ine al­so said no nat­ur­al gas price was ne­go­ti­at­ed for SABIC, the Sau­di Ara­bi­an state-owned , petro­chem­i­cal gi­ant, and the Chi­nese com­pa­ny of Sinopec. Min­is­ter in In­for­ma­tion, Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith, who host­ed yes­ter­day's me­dia brief­ing, de­clined to say if re­tired me­dia ex­ec­u­tive Gren­fell Kissoon had been ap­point­ed to the job of chair­man of state-owned broad­cast­er CN­MG which Kissoon was in the run­ning for, along with sev­er­al top flight ex­ec­u­tives and me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers.