Exxon­Mo­bil is near­ing com­ple­tion of its seis­mic ac­qui­si­tion pro­gramme on Block TTUD-1 off­shore Trinidad and To­ba­go, mark­ing a key mile­stone in the com­pa­ny’s first year of ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ties un­der its pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract.

The up­date was post­ed by the En­er­gy Cham­ber, cit­ing a re­port by Oil­Now.
In a let­ter to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Paul Ri­ley, pres­i­dent of Exxon­Mo­bil T&T Deep­wa­ter Ltd, said the com­pa­ny had com­plet­ed a busy first con­tract year that in­clud­ed US$3.66 mil­lion in di­rect pay­ments to the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.

Exxon­Mo­bil had com­mit­ted to be­gin­ning seis­mic ac­qui­si­tion with­in six months of sign­ing the pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract in Au­gust 2025. The com­pa­ny be­gan the sur­vey about five months af­ter sign­ing the agree­ment.

Ri­ley said sup­port from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty dur­ing the per­mit­ting process helped keep the project on sched­ule.
“This marks an im­por­tant mile­stone in the ex­plo­ration of TTUD-1 and re­flects the sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts of all stake­hold­ers in­volved.”

With the seis­mic cam­paign near­ing com­ple­tion, Exxon­Mo­bil will en­ter the next phase of pro­cess­ing and in­ter­pret­ing seis­mic da­ta to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial drilling tar­gets with­in the ul­tra-deep­wa­ter block.

Block TTUD-1 cov­ers 7,165 square kilo­me­tres off T&T’s east coast in wa­ter depths ex­ceed­ing 2,000 me­tres. The acreage com­bines sev­en for­mer ex­plo­ration blocks and has at­tract­ed in­ter­est due to ge­o­log­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ties with ma­jor deep­wa­ter pe­tro­le­um provinces, in­clud­ing the Guyana-Suri­name Basin, Ghana’s Tano Basin, and ul­tra-deep­wa­ter ar­eas off­shore Nige­ria.

Exxon­Mo­bil is the op­er­a­tor of the block, while Oc­ci­den­tal Pe­tro­le­um holds a 10 per cent par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est fol­low­ing a farm-in agree­ment.

Ri­ley said the part­ner­ship strength­ens the tech­ni­cal and op­er­a­tional ex­per­tise avail­able to eval­u­ate the acreage’s ex­plo­ration po­ten­tial. The com­pa­ny al­so re­port­ed ex­ten­sive use of lo­cal busi­ness­es dur­ing the seis­mic pro­gramme, award­ing con­tracts for per­mit­ting, lo­gis­tics, ma­rine op­er­a­tions, fu­el sup­ply and ac­com­mo­da­tion.

In ad­di­tion, Exxon­Mo­bil in­vest­ed US$935,000 in train­ing, re­search and de­vel­op­ment, and schol­ar­ships for T&T na­tion­als.

The pro­gramme in­clud­ed three ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing ini­tia­tives for of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries. Min­istry rep­re­sen­ta­tives com­plet­ed a three-week ro­ta­tion aboard a seis­mic ves­sel to gain prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in seis­mic da­ta ac­qui­si­tion.

Ri­ley said the ini­tia­tives were in­tend­ed to pre­pare Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als for fu­ture tech­ni­cal and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties should ex­plo­ration on Block TTUD-1 re­sult in a com­mer­cial dis­cov­ery.

Look­ing ahead to the sec­ond con­tract year, Ri­ley said Exxon­Mo­bil is en­gag­ing with the Min­istry of En­er­gy to ex­pand the im­pact of fu­ture in­vest­ments.

“Look­ing ahead to the next con­tract year, we are ac­tive­ly en­gag­ing with the MEEI to ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties to fur­ther in­crease the im­pact of fu­ture pay­ments.”

He added that fu­ture ini­tia­tives are ex­pect­ed to sup­port na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties while build­ing stronger long-term part­ner­ships with lo­cal uni­ver­si­ties.