An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Peren­co’s trans­for­ma­tion in­to one of T&T’s largest en­er­gy pro­duc­ers did not hap­pen overnight. It un­fold­ed through a de­lib­er­ate, decade-long con­sol­i­da­tion strat­e­gy that turned ma­ture, of­ten over­looked as­sets in­to a uni­fied pro­duc­tion sys­tem with na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance.

The com­pa­ny’s en­try point came in 2016, when it ac­quired the Teak, Samaan and Poui (TSP) fields, lo­cat­ed off­shore the south-east coast of Trinidad from Rep­sol, which is a Span­ish multi­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­ny.

“That set a great base of op­er­a­tional ex­cel­lence and process­es and struc­ture,” said Stephane Barc, coun­try man­ag­er for Peren­co.

That foun­da­tion proved de­ci­sive. It al­lowed the An­glo-French in­de­pen­dent to move quick­ly when op­por­tu­ni­ties emerged, scal­ing up its foot­print while main­tain­ing tight op­er­a­tional con­trol. In 2024, Peren­co ac­quired the CAFI as­sets  (Cashima, Amher­s­tia, Flam­boy­ant and Im­mortelle), fol­lowed in Ju­ly 2025 by Ru­by and An­gos­tu­ra from Wood­side En­er­gy. The pace of trans­ac­tions re­shaped the com­pa­ny’s pres­ence in lo­cal up­stream op­er­a­tions and ma­te­ri­al­ly al­tered the coun­try’s pro­duc­tion mix.

“It’s been, as you can imag­ine, a very busy year in 2025,” Barc not­ed. “The ac­qui­si­tion, the in­te­gra­tion of the teams, tak­ing over the as­sets, dif­fer­ent ways of op­er­at­ing, dif­fer­ent ways of han­dling things, which had to be stream­lined and uni­fied.”

The chal­lenge ex­tend­ed be­yond equip­ment and reser­voirs, reach­ing in­to cor­po­rate cul­ture and sys­tems. As­sets ar­rived with dif­fer­ent stan­dards, his­to­ries and work­flows, all of which had to be har­monised.

By ear­ly 2026, the em­pha­sis shift­ed. The ac­qui­si­tion phase gave way to con­sol­i­da­tion and op­ti­mi­sa­tion.

“Right now, we are in a mode of op­ti­mis­ing our op­er­a­tions, en­sur­ing that we have the same way of op­er­at­ing across all the dif­fer­ent as­sets,” Barc said.

Safe­ty re­mained non-ne­go­tiable.

“En­sur­ing as well that safe­ty was, as al­ways, the top of our pri­or­i­ties on all the as­sets and for all our peo­ple.”
Af­ter what he de­scribed as “a year of ac­qui­si­tions and tremen­dous growth”, 2026 be­came a mo­ment to sta­bilise.

“It was im­por­tant to take the time to prop­er­ly struc­ture our op­er­a­tions and our com­pa­ny,” he said. That process ran in par­al­lel with pro­duc­tion goals. “Op­ti­mis­ing pro­duc­tion and de­liv­er­ing the gas and the mol­e­cules that the coun­try need­ed, this was what we had on the menu for 2026.”
The scale of that ef­fort showed up in the num­bers. Pro­duc­tion da­ta re­viewed by the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T in­di­cat­ed that by the first quar­ter of 2025, Peren­co ac­count­ed for rough­ly 22 per cent of na­tion­al oil and gas out­put on a bar­rel-of-oil-equiv­a­lent ba­sis. The met­ric com­bined crude oil, con­den­sate and nat­ur­al gas vol­umes based on en­er­gy con­tent, plac­ing the com­pa­ny sec­ond on­ly to the largest pro­duc­er in the coun­try, ac­cord­ing to the En­er­gy Cham­ber.

Sweat­ing ma­ture fields for max­i­mum val­ue

Peren­co’s ac­qui­si­tion of Wood­side-op­er­at­ed as­sets, in­clud­ing An­gos­tu­ra and Ru­by, came at a care­ful­ly cho­sen mo­ment. “Cre­at­ing a struc­ture took us time, cre­at­ing our rep­u­ta­tion,” Barc ex­plained. “With the ac­qui­si­tion of CAFI, the size of the com­pa­ny grew sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Then the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­quire An­gous­tu­ra and Ru­by came at a mo­ment where we had a good ba­sis.”

Those as­sets brought im­me­di­ate pro­duc­tion, but al­so some­thing less tan­gi­ble.

“It was a very good fit to bring in more pro­duc­tion and to al­so bring in peo­ple from Wood­side that were very well trained; very com­pe­tent in what they were do­ing,” Barc said. “They brought not on­ly gas pro­duc­tion, but al­so their knowl­edge.”

nte­grat­ing that ex­per­tise along­side ex­ist­ing teams be­came a pri­or­i­ty.

“The mix we were do­ing was to en­sure that we brought the or­gan­i­sa­tion as a whole to­geth­er in a way that re­spect­ed both our ex-Wood­side col­leagues and Peren­co col­leagues, and that all that was brought to the high­est lev­el pos­si­ble.”

By mid-2025, the work­force re­flect­ed the ex­pand­ed port­fo­lio. The com­pa­ny em­ployed just over 220 staff in T&T, sup­port­ed by be­tween 300 and 400 con­trac­tors who worked reg­u­lar­ly across the as­sets. The scale marked a sig­nif­i­cant shift from Peren­co’s ear­ly years in the coun­try.
Pub­lic at­ten­tion of­ten fo­cused on An­gos­tu­ra and Ru­by, with ques­tions about time­lines and re­turns. Barc was clear that these were not fu­ture projects wait­ing to be de­liv­ered.

“The An­gos­tu­ra and Ru­by as­sets were pro­duc­ing at the mo­ment,” he said. “There was no par­tic­u­lar ad­di­tion­al or in­cre­men­tal project.” In­stead, the work cen­tred on op­ti­mi­sa­tion.

“We were in the process of op­ti­mis­ing pro­duc­tion with mul­ti­ple sur­face changes and some work on the wells. This was bear­ing fruit, but the ba­sis of the pro­duc­tion was there, and this was what we were man­ag­ing.”
The CAFI as­sets of­fered a sharp­er il­lus­tra­tion of Peren­co’s op­er­at­ing phi­los­o­phy. The ac­qui­si­tion de­liv­ered a net pro­duc­tion in­crease of be­tween 30 and 40 per cent com­pared with the base­line un­der pre­vi­ous op­er­a­tors.

“It was a good fit for the Peren­co ways of op­er­at­ing,” Barc said, “to get those as­sets with some po­ten­tial  or a lot of po­ten­tial  and re­work­ing them in a way where we went af­ter every gas mol­e­cule that was left in the reser­voir.”

That ap­proach in­clud­ed re­open­ing lay­ers, re­work­ing wells and ex­tend­ing field life be­yond orig­i­nal ex­pec­ta­tions.

“This was some­thing that would con­tin­ue in the fu­ture.”
De­spite its grow­ing foot­print, the com­pa­ny re­sist­ed grand la­bels.

“I’m not sure the term gi­ant was the one that I would favour,” Barc said. The fo­cus re­mained on ro­bust­ness.

“We were build­ing a very strong base, and that base was a spring­board for fu­ture growth, whether it was in­ter­nal or ex­ter­nal.”

In the short term, at­ten­tion stayed fixed on ex­ist­ing as­sets: TSP fields  CAFI, Amher­s­tia , Ru­by and the Guayagua­yare ter­mi­nal.

“The most im­por­tant thing was mak­ing sure that those op­er­a­tions were be­ing done safe­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly,” Barc said. “It was about op­er­a­tional per­for­mance and op­er­a­tional ex­cel­lence.”

Look­ing ahead, Peren­co iden­ti­fied a pipeline of in­cre­men­tal projects rather than block­buster de­vel­op­ments. Side­tracks, workovers, and pipeline in­tegri­ty projects were lined up to de­liv­er ad­di­tion­al pro­duc­tion over the next few years. Ex­ter­nal ac­qui­si­tions re­mained an op­tion, but not a pri­or­i­ty.

“Ex­ter­nal growth would come when the time was right and when the op­por­tu­ni­ty arose,” Barc said. “I wasn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about it.”

Safe­ty, scale and the state

If op­ti­mi­sa­tion de­fined Peren­co’s op­er­a­tional agen­da, safe­ty de­fines its cul­ture. Barc re­ject­ed any at­tempt to treat it as one pri­or­i­ty among many.

“It’s not im­por­tant, it’s es­sen­tial,” he said. “It was our pri­or­i­ty on a dai­ly ba­sis.”

The ob­jec­tive was sim­ple and un­com­pro­mis­ing. “I want­ed every sin­gle per­son work­ing with us to go home safe at night, or at the end of the shift, to their wife, to their kids, to their fam­i­lies and friends.” In his view, safe­ty un­der­pinned every­thing else. “If safe­ty was well done, the rest would just float.”

That stance shaped the com­pa­ny’s ap­proach to reg­u­la­to­ry dis­cus­sions, in­clud­ing de­bates around safe­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Barc em­pha­sised di­a­logue over con­fronta­tion.

“Com­mu­ni­ca­tion was es­sen­tial,” he said. “There was a mes­sage from the gov­ern­ment, which had been heard by the Cham­ber, and how this was go­ing to evolve was some­thing to be seen in the next few weeks.”

In the broad­er busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, Barc struck a no­tably pos­i­tive tone.

“The com­mu­ni­ca­tion and dis­cus­sion with the gov­ern­ment and the ad­min­is­tra­tion were re­al­ly good,” he said. “That eased busi­ness.”

He point­ed to ma­ture fields and small ac­cu­mu­la­tions as ar­eas re­quir­ing pol­i­cy at­ten­tion.

“Trinidad must have a look at the ma­ture fields, whether it was gas or oil,” he said. “Some of those small projects could on­ly hap­pen giv­en the right fis­cal con­di­tions.”

He point­ed to mo­men­tum with­in the ad­min­is­tra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly ef­forts to re­duce de­lays and bring projects to life more quick­ly. The cre­ation of an Ac­cel­er­a­tor Hub was de­scribed as “a great ini­tia­tive from the gov­ern­ment to­wards the en­er­gy in­dus­tries”, aimed at cut­ting red tape and speed­ing ap­provals.

For­eign ex­change pres­sures formed part of the wider con­text. Barc framed Peren­co’s con­tri­bu­tion in func­tion­al terms. “We were try­ing to do our job, which was to pro­duce our own gas and bring as much gas as pos­si­ble in­to the coun­try,” he said. “That went hand in hand with bring­ing rev­enues and fore ign rev­enues in­to the coun­try.”

By the close of 2025, the di­rec­tion was un­mis­tak­able. Peren­co had moved be­yond deal-mak­ing in­to a phase de­fined by con­sol­i­da­tion and ex­e­cu­tion, con­cen­trat­ing on max­imis­ing ma­ture as­sets through tight­ly con­trolled op­er­a­tions and a safe­ty-first ap­proach em­bed­ded across the port­fo­lio.