En­er­gy ex­pert Dr Kr­ish­na Per­sad says while the re­cent au­dit of this coun­try’s oil re­serves has es­ti­mat­ed that our un­risked prospec­tive re­sources is three bil­lion bar­rels, he is a bit more op­ti­mistic. He has pre­dict­ed five bil­lion bar­rels.

“They said 3.2 bil­lion bar­rels of oil and my fig­ure is per­haps about five bil­lion in terms of oil. I am not far off but I’m just a lit­tle bit more op­ti­mistic than them,” Per­sad said.

On Wednes­day En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan re­vealed that an au­dit of T&T’s crude oil re­serves and re­sources for the year end­ed 2018 pre­pared by Nether­land, Sewell and As­so­ciates In­cor­po­rat­ed (NSAI) re­vealed sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in this coun­try’s oil prospects.

“Proven Re­serves jumped by 10.3 per cent from 199.5 mil­lion bar­rels to 220.1 mil­lion bar­rels. Prob­a­ble Re­serves rose by 16.6 per cent from 85.5 mil­lion bar­rels to 99.7 mil­lion bar­rels and Pos­si­ble Re­serves climbed by 8.5 per cent from 124.8 mil­lion bar­rels to 135.5 mil­lion bar­rels,” ac­cord­ing to the au­dit Khan said.

“The NSAI’s best es­ti­mate of our Un­risked Prospec­tive Re­sources is now a mam­moth 3.2 bil­lion bar­rels. This is an in­crease of 773.4 per cent over the Un­risked Prospec­tive Re­sources at Jan­u­ary 1, 2012 of on­ly 368.2 mil­lion bar­rels,” he said.

Per­sad said new dis­cov­er­ies are ex­treme­ly good.

“There is more gas and oil to be found and I can say that with a great deal of cer­tain­ty of the prob­a­bil­i­ty of this be­ing true be­cause we have seen that the source rock is present, that the dis­cov­er­ies are be­ing made, and that the dis­cov­er­ies in­clude gas. In the east coast there is in­di­ca­tions of liq­uid hy­dro­car­bon down be­low,” Per­sad said.

Per­sad gave a break­down of the prospec­tives around the coun­try.

“I have al­ways con­sid­ered Her­rera’s on­shore in the South­ern Basin to be high­ly prospec­tive for oil. Touch­stone is prov­ing us all wrong be­cause they thought they were go­ing to get oil too. They made two sub­stan­tial dis­cov­er­ies re­cent­ly of gas and gas con­den­sate,” Per­sad said.

“In my opin­ion the prospects on­shore in that area and the south­west­ern penin­su­la are sub­stan­tial for both oil and gas. The prospect for oil and more gas in the deep wa­ters off­shore the east coast are even more sub­stan­tial,” he said.

“In terms of on­shore I am think­ing we are look­ing at maybe two tcf (tril­lion cu­bic feet) and maybe 500 mil­lion bar­rels of oil,” Per­sad said.

“I have said pub­licly that we are look­ing at prob­a­bly an­oth­er 50 tcf of gas to be dis­cov­ered in the east coast. I al­so be­lieve that there is at least an­oth­er three to four bil­lion bar­rels of oil to be dis­cov­ered in that east coast province area and in ad­di­tion to that in the Gulf of Paria prob­a­bly an­oth­er 500 mil­lion to be dis­cov­ered,” he said.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said the au­dit find­ings are very ex­cit­ing but more needs to be done.

“What that 3.2 bil­lion num­ber is say­ing is that it has iden­ti­fied the sig­nif­i­cant po­ten­tial in the deep­wa­ter and again all that would not be pos­si­ble if the min­istry of en­er­gy did not have three deep­wa­ter bid rounds be­tween 2010 and 2014,” Ram­nar­ine said.

“So, as far as the deep­wa­ter goes, there is very ex­cit­ing stuff. The chal­lenge for deep­wa­ter is the cost of de­vel­op­ment be­cause of the depth of wa­ter and the dis­tance from shore it be­comes very ex­pen­sive to de­vel­op those nat­ur­al gas fields and to de­vel­op any oil which is found.

“The chal­lenge for T&T’s gov­ern­ment go­ing for­ward is to work with BHP to make sure they are able to suc­cess­ful­ly com­mer­cialise all this nat­ur­al gas that they have been find­ing. If they do find oil in deep­wa­ter which I ex­pect then that just helps and en­hances the eco­nom­ics of the en­tire de­vel­op­ment.

“But the deep­wa­ter is the fu­ture of the hy­dro­car­bon in­dus­try in Trinidad and, so far, the news has been very good so I am very op­ti­mistic.

“I have al­ways been very op­ti­mistic about our deep­wa­ter and I think that Broad Side is go­ing to be a well which we will all have to be close­ly mon­i­tor­ing be­cause the out­come there could change a lot for T&T,” he said.

Ram­nar­ine said T&T is do­ing it­self more harm than good by not hav­ing more deep­wa­ter bid rounds.

“T&T is shoot­ing it­self in the foot by not putting out more deep­wa­ter acreage in a bid round. Our deep­wa­ter acreage has there­fore be­come very at­trac­tive be­cause BHP has been suc­cess­ful so if we put out the un­li­censed deep­wa­ter acreage we will ob­vi­ous­ly at­tract a lot of at­ten­tion from ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers and what we want is as much in­ter­est and ac­tiv­i­ty in our deep­wa­ter,” he said.

“I would say that we would need to have a new deep­wa­ter bid round as soon as pos­si­ble and the rea­son for that is that since the year 2014 BHP has been work­ing on de­vel­op­ing the deep­wa­ter. They have done the largest 3D seis­mic sur­vey ever in this coun­try’s his­to­ry in deep­wa­ter and they have drilled ten ex­plo­ration wells in the last four years,” Ram­nar­ine said.

“Sev­en of those ex­plo­ration wells have en­coun­tered hy­dro­car­bon so my point is this BHP has clear­ly de­risked the deep­wa­ter. By de­risk­ing the deep­wa­ter what they have done is they have made the ex­ist­ing un­li­censed deep­wa­ter acreage more valu­able,” he said.

Last month when an­nounc­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a new deep wa­ter bid round ear­ly next year Khan ex­plained why one was not done dur­ing his five-year tenure.

“And see­ing that this is the sea­son I just want to say some­thing that has been in the press for some time with re­gards by a for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter that this ad­min­is­tra­tion has not pro­posed any bid round over its five-year pe­ri­od,” Khan said.

“I would like the gen­tle­man to know and the coun­try to know you don’t just ups and have a bid round,” he said.

Khan said there are two cri­te­ria for a bid round.

“One, it must be li­censed acreage so as min­is­ter of en­er­gy I can­not have a bid round on­shore in the south­ern basin be­cause all the acreage, by and large, is un­der li­cense,” he said.

“Nor can I have a bid round in the Gulf of Paria be­cause the Gulf of Paria, by and large, in the prospec­tive acreage is un­der li­cence,” Khan said.

“It is very dif­fi­cult to have a shal­low wa­ter bid round be­cause most of the acreage is un­der li­cence and would have made ab­solute­ly no sense to come out with a par­al­lel deep wa­ter bid round while BHP was in­volved in some se­ri­ous ex­plo­ration,” Khan said.

Ram­nar­ine said Khan was be­ing con­tra­dic­to­ry since the en­er­gy min­istry ad­ver­tised back in 2016 a num­ber of on­shore blocks for which they in­vit­ed nom­i­na­tions.

“And then strange­ly that on­shore bid round we just nev­er heard any­thing about it again,’ he said.

“What I want to say to Min­is­ter Khan is that it is not cor­rect to say there is no un­li­censed acreage left on­shore. There is un­li­censed acreage left on­shore and I am al­so told that some of the acreage which is cur­rent­ly with Her­itage. Her­itage does not have the deep­er rights that is the right to drill in­to the base­ment or deep­er,” Ram­nar­ine said.

“Mr Khan will be re­mem­bered by his­to­ry as the on­ly min­is­ter of en­er­gy to have nev­er signed a pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract. I think I signed 17 pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts in my time and min­is­ters be­fore me all signed pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts,” Ram­nar­ine said.