Gail Alexan­der

Bet­ter times are in store for the man in the street fol­low­ing the "Ju­bilee" oil dis­cov­ery off south-west Trinidad, es­ti­mat­ed at 48 mil­lion bar­rels, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has as­sured. Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke about what the new oil­field-off Point Fortin-would mean for the pub­lic as she flanked Petrotrin of­fi­cials an­nounc­ing the oil find yes­ter­day. The an­nounce­ment was the fo­cus of the week­ly post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, which was at­tend­ed by the en­tire Cab­i­net. The Prime Min­is­ter dubbed the new oil field the "Ju­bilee Dis­cov­ery" in ho­n­our of this year's 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence. Petrotrin pres­i­dent-des­ig­nate Khalid Has­sanali, an­nounc­ing the find, said it was the first ma­jor oil dis­cov­ery in ten years and would be of ma­jor eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit. The last dis­cov­ery was in the mid-1980s, al­so off the south-west coast near Sol­da­do. Has­sanali said pre­lim­i­nary es­ti­mates project the new re­serves at 48 mil­lion bar­rels.

The find was lo­cat­ed four miles off the west coast of Trinidad in 60 feet of wa­ter. It is an area known as Clus­ter Six in Petrotrin's Trin­mar Gulf of Paria acreage. The find is at a depth of 4,000-4,500 feet and is close to off­shore in­fra­struc­ture. Has­sanali said the av­er­age well on land pro­duces at less than ten bar­rels of oil per day (BOPD), and the av­er­age ma­rine well pro­duces at less than 75 BOPD. "By com­par­i­son, our new wells test­ed at ini­tial pro­duc­tion rates of an im­pres­sive 700 BOPD," he added. Has­sanali said the oil dis­cov­ered was both light crude-a more mar­ketable type-and heavy crude. He said the light crude would be used to di­lute the heavy crude for a bet­ter mar­ketable for­mu­la. Petrotrin in­tends com­menc­ing pro­duc­tion of the wells al­ready drilled in the next 12 months. Car­ol Telemacque, of Petrotrin, said the oil find was made dur­ing last year's Petrotrin drilling pro­gramme. She said it was not proven re­serves in the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard and that test­ing and eval­u­a­tion of the area was still be­ing done.

Telemacque said that by year end, Petrotrin would be able to say with greater cer­tain­ty what is the out­put from the area and if the com­pa­ny can make it ful­ly com­mer­cial" in the larg­er sense." Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "This gold­en an­niver­sary year was in­deed marked by this sig­nif­i­cant find as oil is of­ten re­ferred to as black gold." "There will be no squan­der­ing of these pre­cious re­sources...Every pen­ny de­rived will go to­wards gen­uine peo­ple-cen­tred de­vel­op­ment in sev­er­al ar­eas," she added. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said of the find: "What does this mean for the man in the street...In a phrase, "bet­ter times in the best of ini­tia­tives that will ben­e­fit you." She said the his­toric dis­cov­ery of oil re­serves comes at a time of high oil prices on the glob­al mar­ket and au­gured well for T&T in sev­er­al ways.The Prime Min­is­ter said the ac­tiv­i­ty would de­rive sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits. She said this rev­enue would be used to bol­ster many of the Gov­ern­ment's planned de­vel­op­men­tal projects. She said ben­e­fits to be de­rived would im­pact pos­i­tive­ly on T&T's econ­o­my soon­er than ever, be­cause of the lo­ca­tion and depth of the re­serves which would al­low for ear­li­er than usu­al pro­duc­tion to be­gin. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Ju­bilee Dis­cov­ery would al­so be wel­come stim­u­la­tion of de­mand for en­er­gy ser­vices and job cre­ation in that sec­tor and would cre­ate a buzz in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Of­fi­cials un­sure of rev­enue yield

Petrotrin of­fi­cials could not es­ti­mate what sort of pro­ject­ed rev­enue the find would mean for T&T. The com­pa­ny's pres­i­dent, Lind­say Gillette, not­ing oil prices were as high as US$100, pro­ject­ed they would re­main high around US$80-plus be­cause of high glob­al de­mand for oil. Telemacque said the find might have not been made in ear­li­er years since tech­nol­o­gy might not have been avail­able to spot this. En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said an ex­ten­sive test­ing and eval­u­a­tion pro­gramme was cur­rent­ly un­der way and would con­firm the fu­ture of the area where the oil was dis­cov­ered. Has­sanali said Petrotrin be­lieved that the reser­voirs pen­e­trat­ed in the new­ly-ap­praised acreage ex­tend fur­ther to the north and fur­ther to­wards the west. "Petrotrin there­fore plans to con­tin­ue ex­plor­ing and ap­prais­ing these ar­eas, with a view to grow­ing its oil re­serves," he added. Has­sanali and Gillette both said the find was "a quan­tum leap" for Petrotrin to meet the En­er­gy Min­istry's man­date to in­crease oil pro­duc­tion. Ram­nar­ine not­ed oth­er re­cent finds, in­clud­ing the Bay­field dis­cov­ery. He said that de­vel­op­ment cou­pled with the Ju­bilee Dis­cov­ery held out "ex­cit­ing prospects and op­por­tu­ni­ties" for T&T. Ra­ma­narine said Petrotrin was en­gaged in the last year in a $700 mil­lion drilling pro­gramme in­volv­ing 21 wells in the Trin­mar acreage. He al­so said Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved the 2012 bid rounds.