PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

We still need more ex­plo­ration.

This was the call yes­ter­day from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley at the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny for a joint op­er­at­ing and far­mout agree­ment be­tween Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and EOG Re­sources Trinidad Lim­it­ed .

The Prime Min­is­ter heaped praise up­on the deal as well Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s progress since it be­gan op­er­a­tions. But said he hoped for more pro­duc­tion.

“With re­spect to on­shore pro­duc­tion, ef­forts al­so need to be fo­cused on in­creas­ing pro­duc­tion on land, be­cause it is on­shore pro­duc­tion that cre­ates greater lev­els of em­ploy­ment when com­pared to off­shore pro­duc­tion, and gen­er­ates a prod­uct with a high­er lo­cal val­ue-added,” said the Prime Min­is­ter at the cer­e­mo­ny at Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s Port of Spain of­fice.

“In this re­gard, I would like to see Her­itage ex­pand its lease op­er­a­tor­ship pro­gramme and un­der­take a land drilling cam­paign of its own. We need the oil, we need the mon­ey, we need the jobs.”

The agree­ment be­tween Her­itage and EOG al­lows for a strate­gic part­ner­ship which will al­low the com­pa­ny to farm in­to a por­tion of Her­itage’s acreage with­in the Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion (Pub­lic Pe­tro­le­um Rights) Li­cence cov­er­ing the off­shore Trinidad North­ern Ar­eas Block in the Gulf of Paria (un­der a TNA Li­cense).

The joint ven­ture is ex­pect­ed to com­mence drilling its 1st ex­plo­ration well this year, Her­itage said in a re­lease on the sign­ing yes­ter­day.

“I ex­pect this part­ner­ship be­tween Her­itage and EOG to be a fruit­ful one, giv­en the align­ment of the strate­gic ob­jec­tives of both par­ties, with EOG’s in­tent be­ing to ex­pand its op­er­a­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and Her­itage’s in­tent be­ing to in­crease its pro­duc­tion and de­vel­op its re­serves in a time­ly man­ner,” he said.

EOG and Her­itage have been part­ners in the South East Coast Con­sor­tium Block joint ven­ture (off­shore Trinidad) since 1992.

The Prime Min­is­ter said Her­itage had per­formed above what had been achieved by Petrotrin since it be­gan op­er­a­tions in 2018, while laud­ing the com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to stay pro­duc­tive de­spite the dis­rup­tive im­pact of the pan­dem­ic and un­cer­tain­ty with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“Just imag­ine that dur­ing a year with two black swan events, name­ly a pan­dem­ic and his­tor­i­cal­ly low en­er­gy prices dip­ping in­to neg­a­tive ter­ri­to­ry, Her­itage was able to main­tain pro­duc­tion lev­els above that of the for­mer Petrotrin. Her­itage had been do­ing so well pri­or to the pan­dem­ic that the com­pa­ny was in a po­si­tion to store its pro­duc­tion dur­ing the pe­ri­od of low­est mar­ket prices, while still meet­ing debt com­mit­ments and the costs of its op­er­a­tions,” said the Prime Min­is­ter.

“In ad­di­tion to in­creas­ing pro­duc­tion, Her­itage has al­so been able to achieve low­er lift­ing costs than its pre­de­ces­sor, in the range of US$28 per bar­rel, com­pared to US$35-38 un­der Petrotrin,” he said.