Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration has seen in­creased pro­duc­tion and rev­enue of over US$13 mil­lion from its re­cent ac­qui­si­tion the Cen­tral Block.

In the op­er­a­tional up­date is­sued by the com­pa­ny on Mon­day, Paul Baay, pres­i­dent and CEO said, “We are pleased to pro­vide our first op­er­a­tional up­date on the Cen­tral Block fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the ac­qui­si­tion. Since the com­ple­tion, we have de­liv­ered quar­ter-over-quar­ter pro­duc­tion growth through con­tin­ued plant op­ti­mi­sa­tion—an ex­cel­lent achieve­ment by our Cen­tral Block team.”

Touch­stone stat­ed in the op­er­a­tional up­date that gross pro­duc­tion vol­umes from Cen­tral Block av­er­aged 2,969 boe/d (1,930 boe/d net) dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2025, com­pris­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16.74 MM­cf/d of nat­ur­al gas and 179 bbls/d of NGLs.

The com­pa­ny went on to say that based on pre­lim­i­nary field es­ti­mates, sec­ond quar­ter 2025 gross pro­duc­tion av­er­aged 3,023 boe/d (1,965 boe/d net), com­prised of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 17.05 MM­cf/d of nat­ur­al gas and 181 bbls/d of NGLs.

Baay con­tin­ued, “This up­date al­so high­lights the strate­gic ad­van­tage of in­te­grat­ing LNG-based pric­ing in­to our mar­ket­ing port­fo­lio. With com­mer­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion com­plete and the first LNG pay­ment ex­pect­ed by the end of Ju­ly, we are po­si­tioned to ben­e­fit from pre­dictable cash flows un­der the ex­port con­tract. The Cen­tral Block’s strong per­for­mance sup­ports our ac­qui­si­tion ra­tio­nale and en­hances our mar­ket­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty, di­ver­si­fy­ing rev­enue streams across LNG, petro­chem­i­cal, and fixed-price gas sales.”

Touch­stone com­plet­ed the 100 per cent ac­qui­si­tion of the share cap­i­tal of Shell Trinidad Cen­tral Block Lim­it­ed in De­cem­ber 2024. The com­pa­ny stat­ed the en­ti­ty had been re­named Touch­stone Trinidad Cen­tral Block Ltd..

The com­pa­ny has a 65 per cent op­er­at­ing in­ter­est in the on­shore Cen­tral Block ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cence with Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny hold­ing the re­main­ing 35 per cent par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est.

The Cen­tral Block as­set in­cludes four pro­duc­ing nat­ur­al gas wells and a gas pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

Nat­ur­al gas from the Cen­tral Block is sold un­der two sep­a­rate con­tracts, one linked to LNG ex­port pric­ing and the oth­er to do­mes­tic mar­ket pric­ing, pri­mar­i­ly sup­ply­ing Trinidad’s petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor. LNG sales are sub­ject to ves­sel avail­abil­i­ty, re­ferred to as lift­ings.

Ac­cord­ing to the no­tice from Touch­stone, from Jan­u­ary through April 2025, 11 LNG lift­ings (in­clud­ing as­so­ci­at­ed liq­uids) were com­plet­ed, to­talling 2,207,696 MMB­tu. An ad­di­tion­al 11,065 MMB­tu was sold in­to the do­mes­tic mar­ket. These vol­umes gen­er­at­ed gross rev­enue of $13.6 mil­lion ($8.9 mil­lion net). Af­ter trans­porta­tion and pro­cess­ing costs, gross rev­enue to­talled US$8.9 mil­lion (US$5.8 mil­lion net). The Cen­tral Block al­so gen­er­at­ed US$1 mil­lion in gross rev­enues (US$0.65 mil­lion net) from con­den­sate sales at the fa­cil­i­ty, re­sult­ing in to­tal gross rev­enue of US$9.9 mil­lion (US$6.4 mil­lion net) for the pe­ri­od.

All sales vol­umes are sub­ject to a 12.5 per cent state roy­al­ty and ap­plic­a­ble plant op­er­at­ing costs.