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Friday, July 18, 2025

PRIME MINISTER CALLS FOR MORE EXPLORATION

by

Peter Christopher
1577 days ago
20210325
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, centre, after the signing ceremony for an agreement between Heritage Petroleum and EOG Resources Trinidad Limited yesterday.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, centre, after the signing ceremony for an agreement between Heritage Petroleum and EOG Resources Trinidad Limited yesterday.

OFFICE OF THER PRIME MINISTER

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.


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