The de­ci­sion by Aus­tralian out­fit BHP to al­low the glob­al en­er­gy sec­tor ac­cess to its deep wa­ter seis­mic and well da­ta it ac­quired off­shore T&T is be­ing hailed by in­dus­try in­sid­ers as a ma­jor step in the right di­rec­tion. They say it is like­ly to sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries’ at­tempt to at­tract com­pa­nies in its next deep-wa­ter bid-round.

A bid-round is where com­pa­nies are in­vit­ed to make of­fers to the gov­ern­ment for dif­fer­ent ar­eas to ex­plore for oil and gas. The of­fers usu­al­ly in­clude the ac­qui­si­tion of seis­mic and oth­er da­ta, the drilling of wells, the gov­ern­ment/com­pa­ny split of the prof­its, should oil and gas be found, as well as a sig­na­ture bonus if the area is con­sid­ered prospec­tive.

T&T has not had a bid-round in the deep wa­ter since 2014 and the gov­ern­ment has been se­vere­ly crit­i­cised for its lethar­gy.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan has de­fend­ed the lack of a bid round say­ing to have a bid-round you must have acreage to bid.

“ In terms of the shal­low wa­ter, most of the shal­low wa­ter acreage and most of the shal­low wa­ter prospec­tive acreage are al­ready un­der li­cense so the re­al up­side po­ten­tial lies in the deep wa­ter but it would have made no sense to come out with a par­al­lel deep wa­ter bid round when we were in the throes of a suc­cess­ful deep wa­ter pro­gramme,” Khan said.

He re­vealed: “Now that pro­gramme is com­plet­ed we have now classed the da­ta and we have made an im­por­tant in­ter­ven­tion here we have now agreed with BHP for the de­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the deep wa­ter da­ta so all the seis­mic and all the well in­for­ma­tion will now be pack­aged and added to which BHP will now be re­lin­quish­ing acreage they do not want be­cause that is part of the PSC (pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract) af­ter the ex­plo­ration pe­ri­od you have to re­lin­quish acreage that you do not plan to de­vel­op,” he said.

“So now we are in a po­si­tion to have re­lin­quished BHP acreage which in a sense will be ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly close to the dis­cov­er­ies and it will have im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion both from its well in­for­ma­tion and its seis­mic pro­gramme bear­ing in mind that BHP at the point in time ran the largest deep wa­ter seis­mic sur­vey in the world,” Khan said.

Khan said with the added da­ta the gov­ern­ment can now have a deep-wa­ter bid-round.

He, how­ev­er, stat­ed that deep wa­ter is the most ex­pen­sive part of ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion.

“It is not shal­low wa­ter it is not on­shore so it calls for sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal, all over the world in­ter­na­tion­al ma­jors are con­strained with cap­i­tal so pos­si­bly now is not the time to go out to the mar­ket but hav­ing said that we will be in a tech­ni­cal­ly good po­si­tion to go back out with a deep wa­ter bid round in the lat­ter part of this year,” Khan said.

En­er­gy Con­sul­tant He­le­na In­niss wel­comed the news say­ing it will al­low for more com­pe­ti­tion on the blocks.

In­niss was a for­mer Di­rec­tor of Re­source man­age­ment at the Min­istry of En­er­gy and has worked on many bid rounds.

She ex­plained: “It will al­low for the da­ta to be as­sessed by com­pa­nies with dif­fer­ent ideas, pos­si­bly philoso­phies which could ul­ti­mate­ly lead to more com­pe­ti­tion in the ar­eas that are thought to be prospec­tive.”

Win­ston Boodoo who was once the coun­try man­ag­er in T&T for the French Ma­jor To­tal praised the move and agreed with In­niss that it will lead to greater in­ter­est.

He said nor­mal­ly com­pa­nies hold on­to that da­ta and nev­er share it.

Boodoo ques­tioned if by mak­ing it avail­able to the in­dus­try it may re­sult in a com­mis­sion for BHP if the da­ta is bought or leased by po­ten­tial bid­ders. But he said cru­cial­ly the coun­try will ben­e­fit.

“The most im­por­tant thing in all of this is that in any bid-round the more well da­ta you have avail­able for the po­ten­tial bid­ders, and the more seis­mic da­ta you have for po­ten­tial bid­ders, the bet­ter off for the coun­try or the gov­ern­ment will be to get good and use­ful bids, with some good com­mit­ments for fur­ther seis­mic and com­mit­ment with wells which is what you want,” Boodoo ex­plained.

He added: “When you don’t have prop­er well da­ta and seis­mic da­ta com­pa­nies tend to put in low and sim­ple bids and then in the first phase of your ex­plo­ration pro­gramme you would ac­quire more seis­mic, then you spend an­oth­er year in­ter­pret­ing it and then you will con­sid­er in the sec­ond phase if you want to drill. So you will get low bids with­out good seis­mic da­ta and it looks like the BHP da­ta is a lot of very good da­ta.”

Boodoo said BHP is in­volved in all the deep wa­ter blocks that were picked up last time and like­ly has the best da­ta and the best prospects and are sure to re­tain those prospects and re­lin­quish the rest.

He said it is al­so pos­si­ble that BHP could re­lin­quish some of its blocks be­cause of the way in which the con­tracts are drawn up and then bid again on the very blocks and ac­quire them. This he not­ed had prece­dence as BG, now Shell, did some­thing sim­i­lar in its Dol­phin block.

In­niss said she hoped oth­ers will fol­low in BHP’s foot­step.

“Now that the hold­er of the largest amount of shal­low wa­ter acreage in the shal­low wa­ter is sig­nalling by their shed­ding of geo­sci­en­tists and en­gi­neers that their fu­ture in the hy­dro­car­bon busi­ness may be a thing of the past, it would cer­tain­ly ben­e­fit the coun­try if they and oth­ers fol­low suit.” bpTT and Her­itage are by far the largest hold­ers of nearshore and on­land blocks.

Khan ex­pects the next deep wa­ter bid-round to take place at the end of the year.