State-run Pe­tro­le­um Cor­po­ra­tion of Ja­maica (PCJ) will await the out­comes of acreage dis­cus­sions with com­pa­nies be­fore con­sid­er­ing an­oth­er bid round, PCJ oil and gas man­ag­er Bri­an Richard­son told BNamer­i­c­as. The of­fi­cial con­firmed that PCJ opt­ed not to pur­sue any bids re­ceived in the sec­ond bid round which end­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2011.

"Sub­se­quent­ly, we car­ried out a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of our process­es and com­ing out of that we are tar­get­ing in­ter­me­di­ates, ma­jors and su­per­ma­jors, and sen­si­tiz­ing them to the op­por­tu­ni­ties that ex­ist in Ja­maica's on­shore and off­shore acreages," he added. PCJ launched the last round for 19 off­shore and four on­shore ar­eas cov­er­ing a to­tal of 66,762km2 and 10,991 square kilo­me­tres, re­spec­tive­ly, in March 2010.

Con­tract terms in­clud­ed five-year ex­plo­ration and 20-year pro­duc­tion pe­ri­ods, the lat­ter of which could be ex­tend­ed by ten years. Oth­er terms were a 33.3 per cent max­i­mum in­come tax rate and/or pos­si­ble tax ex­emp­tion for a num­ber of years, and per­mis­sion to sell, farm-out or joint ven­ture op­por­tu­ni­ties to oth­er com­pa­nies.

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