The four pro­duc­tion con­tracts signed this week be­tween the T&T Gov­ern­ment and Aus­tralian en­er­gy com­pa­ny BHP Bil­li­ton are for the drilling of six wells in the deep wa­ters off Trinidad.

They are blocks TTDAA 5, 7, 28 and 29 lo­cat­ed in wa­ters which are con­sid­ered fron­tier ar­eas be­cause they have not been ex­plored.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Kevin Ram­nar­ine said a dis­cov­ery in the deep wa­ter could have sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tions for the coun­try's econ­o­my.

"Pre­lim­i­nary es­ti­mates of the com­bined un­risked nat­ur­al gas re­source po­ten­tial of these blocks are in the range of 2.4 to 23.6 tril­lion cu­bic feet and un­risked crude oil re­sources are in the range of 428 mil­lion to 4.2 bil­lion bar­rels of oil," he said, adding that the con­tracts had the po­ten­tial to "rad­i­cal­ly re­shape the eco­nom­ic land­scape of this coun­try in com­ing years."

Ram­nar­ine said the blocks were award­ed to BHP in a trans­par­ent process fol­low­ing the rec­om­men­da­tion of the tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee and the overview com­mit­tee. As part of the agree­ment, BHP has com­mit­ted to ac­quir­ing 5,330 square kilo­me­tres of 3D seis­mic and the drilling of six wells.

The com­pa­ny has al­so com­mit­ted it­self to the pay­ment of ad­min­is­tra­tive charges, con­tri­bu­tion of funds to pro­vide train­ing and re­search and de­vel­op­ment, as well as pro­duc­tion and equip­ment bonus­es and schol­ar­ships.

Ram­nar­ine said the con­tracts re­flect­ed the chang­ing glob­al en­vi­ron­ment in which T&T need­ed to en­sure that it got the terms and con­di­tions right. There were changes to the fis­cal regime that al­lows BHP to re­cov­er as much as 80 per cent of its costs.

Pres­i­dent of BHP Bil­li­ton Trinidad Vin­cent Pereira said the plan was to con­duct its seis­mic in the first half of next year in a joint ef­fort with bpTT. He said BHP was at­tract­ed to the blocks be­cause it be­lieved there were hy­dro­car­bons in the deep wa­ter off Trinidad.

He al­so ex­plained that blocks 28 and 29 were like­ly to have the same play as the com­pa­ny's An­gos­tu­ra field in Block 2c from which it has al­ready pro­duced 74 mil­lion bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent. Blocks 5 and 6 are be­lieved to have the Miocene play. Pereira said he was hope­ful that the com­pa­ny will make dis­cov­er­ies but hoped it would not be as com­plex as its An­gos­tu­ra field.

He said: "Our track record in Trinidad and To­ba­go speaks for it­self. For ex­am­ple, An­gos­tu­ra orig­i­nal­ly com­menced oil pro­duc­tion in 2005; with­in 40 months of the orig­i­nal 2001 dis­cov­er­ies–a record time­frame. In­deed, the Kairi and Can­teen oil fields, were the first new oil reser­voirs to have been iden­ti­fied any­where in Trinidad and To­ba­go for 33 years–and al­so marked the first off­shore oil pro­duc­tion from this new ge­o­log­ic play in the Oligocene reser­voirs."

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