De­vel­op­ment drilling for nat­ur­al gas has of­fi­cial­ly re­sumed in the Cen­tral Block fol­low­ing the spud­ding of the Cara­pal Ridge-3 De­vel­op­ment Well – the first such op­er­a­tion in the area since 2006.

In a state­ment on Mon­day, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries con­firmed the restart of ac­tiv­i­ty, de­scrib­ing the mile­stone as a sig­nif­i­cant boost for the coun­try’s on­shore en­er­gy sec­tor. En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal, along with Min­is­ter in the min­istry Ernesto Ke­sar, ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to Touch­stone Trinidad Cen­tral Block on the achieve­ment.

Touch­stone as­sumed op­er­a­tor­ship of the Cen­tral Block un­der an Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion Li­cence fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful trans­fer from Shell Trinidad Cen­tral Block Lim­it­ed on May 16, 2025. The block cur­rent­ly pro­duces ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21 mil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day (mm­scf/d).

Since ac­quir­ing the as­set, Touch­stone has as­sessed the re­main­ing gas re­sources and out­lined plans for a four-well de­vel­op­ment drilling pro­gramme. Pro­duc­tion from Cara­pal Ridge-3, the first well in the cam­paign, is fore­cast to be­gin in Feb­ru­ary 2026. If all four wells are suc­cess­ful, out­put from the Cen­tral Block is pro­ject­ed to ex­ceed 50 mm­scf/d.

The min­istry al­so re­vealed that, as part of its dri­ve to ac­cel­er­ate ac­tiv­i­ty across the en­er­gy sec­tor, it col­lab­o­rat­ed with the op­er­a­tor to en­able drilling to com­mence three weeks ahead of sched­ule.

“These in­vest­ments in drilling are wel­comed, as they help bring much-need­ed nat­ur­al gas to mar­ket,” the min­istry stat­ed, adding that it looks for­ward to con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion with op­er­a­tors to re­vi­talise the en­er­gy sec­tor for the ben­e­fit of the cit­i­zens of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.