The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) yes­ter­day grant­ed a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance (CEC) to EOG Re­sources for off­shore ex­plo­ration with­in the NC­MA 4(a) un­lim­it­ed block.

This ap­proval al­lows for the drilling of two ex­plorato­ry gas wells, des­ig­nat­ed TG1 and TG2, lo­cat­ed off the north coast of Trinidad.

This de­vel­op­ment is be­ing hailed as a land­mark de­ci­sion, rep­re­sent­ing the first CEC is­sued for the oil and gas sec­tor un­der the EMA’s new­ly ap­point­ed board of di­rec­tors.

A press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day stat­ed that EMA chair­man Doolar Ram­lal, high­light­ed that the ap­proval was grant­ed well with­in its statu­to­ry time­frame, un­der­scor­ing the au­thor­i­ty’s com­mit­ment to ef­fi­cient, trans­par­ent, and time­ly de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es.

“The board is ful­ly com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s vi­sion of ad­vanc­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment across Trinidad and To­ba­go, while en­sur­ing that reg­u­la­to­ry process­es are stream­lined for greater ef­fi­cien­cy, all with­out com­pro­mis­ing our rig­or­ous stan­dards for en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion,” Ram­lal said.

The ap­pli­ca­tion for the CEC was sub­mit­ted to the EMA on March 5, 2025, and un­der­went a com­pre­hen­sive re­view process, which in­clud­ed sev­er­al re­quests for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion and clar­i­fi­ca­tion and an ex­ten­sive tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment of the pro­posed drilling ac­tiv­i­ty.

The EMA’s as­sess­ment con­sid­ered, among oth­er fac­tors:

* Stake­hold­er en­gage­ment ef­forts un­der­tak­en by EOG, along­side is­sues raised di­rect­ly with the Au­thor­i­ty;

* De­tailed project doc­u­men­ta­tion, in­clud­ing de­tailed de­scrip­tions, sched­ules, maps, ves­sel spec­i­fi­ca­tions, and as­so­ci­at­ed sup­port ac­tiv­i­ties;

* Hy­dro­car­bon spill and drill cut­tings dis­per­sion mod­el­ling, based on sim­i­lar off­shore projects;

* An emer­gency re­sponse plan ad­dress­ing po­ten­tial ac­ci­dents, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, and oth­er haz­ards;

* Base­line da­ta on the phys­i­cal, bi­o­log­i­cal, and so­cio-cul­tur­al en­vi­ron­ment; and

* A con­cep­tu­al waste man­age­ment plan with a qual­i­ta­tive as­sess­ment of po­ten­tial en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts, in­clud­ing noise, air emis­sions, ma­rine dis­charges, and ves­sel traf­fic.

Fol­low­ing the eval­u­a­tion of all sub­mit­ted in­for­ma­tion, the EMA de­ter­mined that the pro­vid­ed de­tails were suf­fi­cient and, as a re­sult, an En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment (EIA) was not re­quired for the pro­posed ac­tiv­i­ty.

The EMA stat­ed that it reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment, ef­fi­cien­cy and trans­paren­cy, in en­sur­ing that en­vi­ron­men­tal and reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards are up­held while sup­port­ing sus­tain­able na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in T&T.