En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr. Roodal Mooni­lal has hailed the re­sump­tion of drilling in the Cara­pal Ridge-3 De­vel­op­ment Well for the first time in al­most 20 years.

In a news re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) an­nounced that de­vel­op­ment drilling tar­get­ing nat­ur­al gas re­serves in Cen­tral Block had re­sumed in the well.

The re­lease stat­ed, “The last de­vel­op­ment well drilled in this block was in 2006.”

Min­is­ter Mooni­lal and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy In­dus­tries Ernesto Ke­sar ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to Touch­stone Trinidad Cen­tral Block (Touch­stone) on the mile­stone.

Touch­stone ac­quired the Cen­tral Block un­der an ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cence fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful trans­fer from Shell Trinidad Cen­tral Block Lim­it­ed on 16 May 2025.

The com­pa­ny, through its whol­ly owned Trinida­di­an sub­sidiary, com­plet­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of 100 per cent of the share cap­i­tal of Shell Trinidad Cen­tral Block Lim­it­ed for pre­lim­i­nary cash con­sid­er­a­tion of $28.4 mil­lion.

The block, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry re­lease, pro­duces ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21 mm­scf/d.

The Min­istry said, “Since ac­quir­ing the block, Touch­stone has eval­u­at­ed the re­main­ing re­sources re­sult­ing in their plans to drill four de­vel­op­ment wells. Pro­duc­tion from Cara­pal Ridge-3, the first well of this cam­paign, is ex­pect­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2026. Should all four wells in this cam­paign be suc­cess­ful, pro­duc­tion from Cen­tral Block is fore­cast to ex­ceed 50 mm­scf/d. “

In Touch­stone’s man­age­ment’s dis­cus­sion and analy­sis for the three and nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025 and 2024, the com­pa­ny stat­ed the ac­qui­si­tion grant­ed the com­pa­ny a a 65 per cent op­er­at­ing in­ter­est in the on­shore Cen­tral block ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cence. State-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny holds the re­main­ing 35 per cent par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est.

Touch­stone not­ed, “The Cen­tral block as­sets in­clude four pro­duc­ing nat­ur­al gas wells and a gas pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty, with pro­duc­tion from the Cara­pal Ridge, Bara­ka, and Bara­ka East liq­uids-rich nat­ur­al gas pools. In ad­di­tion to low-de­cline pro­duc­tion, the block of­fers up­side po­ten­tial through in­fill drilling and ex­plo­ration prospects.”

The ac­qui­si­tion in­clud­ed three nat­ur­al gas sales con­tracts: one with ac­cess to the Trinidad do­mes­tic mar­ket and two with ac­cess to At­lantic LNG.

The Min­istry re­lease said, “These in­vest­ments in drilling by Touch­stone are wel­comed as they aid in bring­ing much need­ed nat­ur­al gas to mar­ket. The MEEI wel­comes this re­newed ac­tiv­i­ty in our on­shore nat­ur­al gas fields and looks for­ward to fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion with all op­er­a­tors in re­vi­tal­iz­ing our en­er­gy sec­tor to ben­e­fit the cit­i­zens of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The Cen­tral block is lo­cat­ed with­in the hy­dro­car­bon-rich Her­rera fair­way and is con­tigu­ous with the Or­toire block.