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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Five onshore/nearshore blocks awarded

by

GEISHA KOWLESSAR-ALONZO
385 days ago
20240622
Trinity Exploration and Production CEO Jeremy Bridglalsingh, right, signs the exploration and production license for the Buenos Ayres block yesterday. Also signing are Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries permanent secretary Penelope Bradshaw-Niles, left, Minister of Energy and Energy Industries Stuart Young, SC, and Heritage deputy chairman Reynold Ajodhasingh at the signing ceremony, Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries, Tower C, International Waterfront Centre, Port-of-Spain.

Trinity Exploration and Production CEO Jeremy Bridglalsingh, right, signs the exploration and production license for the Buenos Ayres block yesterday. Also signing are Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries permanent secretary Penelope Bradshaw-Niles, left, Minister of Energy and Energy Industries Stuart Young, SC, and Heritage deputy chairman Reynold Ajodhasingh at the signing ceremony, Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries, Tower C, International Waterfront Centre, Port-of-Spain.

ANISTO ALVES

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cences for five hy­dro­car­bon blocks were award­ed by the Min­istry of En­er­gy at a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny aris­ing out of the 2022 on­shore and nearshore com­pet­i­tive bid­ding round yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at the event, which was held at the of­fices of Min­istry of En­er­gy, In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Port-of-Spain En­er­gy, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young ex­plained the blocks are lo­cat­ed in the cen­tral and south­ern on­shore ar­eas of Trinidad and have sig­nif­i­cant un­tapped po­ten­tial for fu­ture dis­cov­er­ies.

Young said the grant of these li­cences will al­low the coun­try to progress cur­rent op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in these acreages and iden­ti­fy new prospects as well.

This ex­er­cise, he added, is a part of Gov­ern­ment’s on­go­ing pro­gramme to max­imise the ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try’s hy­dro­car­bon re­sources.

"Hence our con­tin­u­ing pro­gramme of pro­mot­ing on­go­ing ex­plo­ration on land, shal­low wa­ter and deep-wa­ter re­gions, to sus­tain our en­er­gy sec­tor. To this end, we re­main stead­fast in our com­mit­ment to leav­ing no hy­dro­car­bon mol­e­cule be­hind," Young added.

The 2022 On­shore and Nearshore Com­pet­i­tive Bid Round was opened on Ju­ly 8, 2022 and re­mained open for six months un­til 12 noon on Jan­u­ary 9, 2023.

Com­pa­nies were giv­en six months to sub­mit a bid on any of the 11 blocks avail­able.

Up­on the clo­sure of the bid round, 16 bids were re­ceived for eight blocks.

The bid pro­pos­als were re­viewed by a tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee and an overview com­mit­tee es­tab­lished by Cab­i­net, com­pris­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs.

The re­ports and rec­om­men­da­tions of these com­mit­tees were then sub­mit­ted for Cab­i­net’s ap­proval.

Based on rec­om­men­da­tions, Cab­i­net agreed to the award of li­cences for five of the eight blocks, name­ly the Aripero; Buenos Ayres; Charu­ma; Cipero and St Mary’s, for which ne­go­ti­a­tions were suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed.

The six en­er­gy com­pa­nies sign­ing the li­cences for the five blocks are NABI Con­struc­tion, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny, Oil­belt Ser­vices, A&V Oil and Gas, Primera Oil and Gas and NGC E&P In­vest­ment.

Young said the ne­go­ti­a­tions on the terms of the li­cences for the re­main­ing three blocks name­ly: the Tul­sa, Guayagua­yare (on­shore) and South-West Penin­su­la (on­shore) blocks are on­go­ing and a de­ci­sion is ex­pect­ed to be made soon.

NGC's chair­man, Dr Joseph Khan said the sign­ing will see the com­pa­ny as­sume a par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est in two on­shore blocks.

"NGC –through our whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary NGC E&P In­vest­ments Ltd–will have a 20 per cent car­ried par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est in these blocks for the ex­plo­ration phase. How­ev­er, our aim is to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly along­side the op­er­a­tor, Touch­stone to help mon­e­tise any re­sources that may be found in this acreage, for the ben­e­fit of T&T," he said.

Khan added that the start-up of pro­duc­tion in the Or­toire Block gives great cause for op­ti­mism, not­ing that the com­pa­ny has tak­en an im­por­tant step to­wards de­vel­op­ing the Charu­ma and Cipero Blocks.


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