GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Eleven on­shore/nearshore blocks were yes­ter­day of­fered to com­pa­nies by the Min­istry of En­er­gy in the 2022 com­pet­i­tive bid round.

Kim­ber­lee Lon­don, Se­nior Ge­ol­o­gist at the Min­istry gave de­tails at the Sev­enth Con­fer­ence of the Ge­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T 2022 held at the Hy­att Re­gency and said bids will be opened for six months, with the dead­line for sub­mis­sions be­ing Jan­u­ary 2023.

The blocks in­clude Aripero, Buenos Ayres, Charu­ma, Cipero, Cory D, Cory F, Guayagua­yare, St Mary’s, South West Penin­su­la On­shore, South West Penin­su­la Off­shore and Tul­sa.

The blocks will be award­ed three months af­ter the close in April 2023.

In de­tail­ing a sum­ma­ry of the process Lon­don ex­plained that prospec­tive bid­ders must pay a bid fee of US$30,000 or the equiv­a­lent $TT pri­or to the close of bids.

She said Clause Five was amend­ed to al­low pay­ment in lo­cal cur­ren­cy as con­cerns were raised by some on­shore op­er­a­tions.

“They in­di­cat­ed that based on the type of com­pa­nies that we ex­pect to come in and the range of blocks that we have for the on­shore that we should be able to al­low the process to in­clude pay­ment in TT dol­lars and we have in­cor­po­rat­ed that in­to our bid round,” Lon­don added.

This fee en­ti­tles the bid­der to re­ceive the da­ta pack­age and the right to bid on any or all of the blocks.

Each bid con­tains pro­pos­als in tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial eval­u­a­tion of the block, min­i­mum work pro­gramme, min­i­mum ex­pen­di­ture oblig­a­tion and sig­na­ture bonus.

Bids should be sub­mit­ted un­der con­fi­den­tial cov­er to the Of­fice of the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries by 12 noon on the dead­line date.

All bid­ders are re­quired to de­liv­er an oral pre­sen­ta­tion in sup­port of their tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial eval­u­a­tions to the rel­e­vant min­istry per­son­nel.

Suc­cess­ful bid­ders shall ex­e­cute an Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion Li­cense with the state with­in 30 days of no­ti­fi­ca­tion of their suc­cess­ful bid.

The de­ci­sion pro­ceed with E&P li­cense was made be­cause of lega­cy li­cens­es and the chal­lenge of hav­ing a Pro­duc­tion Shar­ing Con­tract (PSC) on land.