Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed has re­sumed oil sales and ex­ports.
In a press re­lease is­sued this af­ter­noon, the com­pa­ny stat­ed that 550,000 bar­rels of crude oil were sold on June 19th. This was the com­pa­ny's first sale since April 30th, since a de­ci­sion was tak­en to store rather than sell its crude since prices were at a record low.

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um:

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Her­itage) is pleased to re­port that oil ex­ports have been re­sumed with the sale and ex­port of 550,000 bar­rels of crude on June 19th 2020. This was the com­pa­ny's first car­go sale since April 30th 2020.

Dur­ing the two (2) month in­ter­val, the de­ci­sion was made to store rather than sell its crude, since crude prices were at record lows. This steep de­cline in oil prices, which fore­cast­ed a fall to as low as US$13 a bar­rel for Brent, was a con­se­quence of a glut in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket as a re­sult of sev­er­al glob­al fac­tors in­clud­ing the slow­down of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty due to the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic and the 'oil price war' be­tween Sau­di Ara­bia and Rus­sia.

While the com­pa­ny de­liv­ered strong per­for­mance dur­ing the first two quar­ters of fis­cal 2019/2020, the rapid de­cline in prices dur­ing the third quar­ter was chal­leng­ing and re­quired swift, ro­bust but pru­dent ac­tion.

Con­se­quent­ly, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um op­ti­mised the use of all 1.8 mil­lion bar­rels of tank stor­age avail­able in Pointe-a-Pierre and Point Fortin un­til the crude prices re­cov­ered suf­fi­cient­ly.

As gov­ern­ments around the world con­tin­ue to ease re­stric­tions on non-es­sen­tial trav­el and trade, and with de­mand for pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts be­gin­ning to re­cov­er, Brent is now trad­ing at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $US42 per bar­rel.

As a re­sult, Her­itage has ben­e­fit­ed from this de­ci­sion to store and to re­sume its sale of crude at much more fa­vor­able price and mar­ket con­di­tions. Be­cause of this stor­age strat­e­gy, which al­lowed for the de­fer­ral of the sale of the crude car­go to June, Her­itage has earned ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$88 mil­lion over and above what it would have re­ceived for just one car­go of crude if this had been sold at April/May Brent prices.

Last week's sale and the suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion of the stor­age strat­e­gy was no small feat and was the cul­mi­na­tion of the sup­port and co­op­er­a­tion of its em­ploy­ees, con­trac­tors and the wider Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (TPHL) Group. While it is ex­pect­ed that it will take some time for the glob­al oil in­dus­try to ful­ly re­cov­er from these un­prece­dent­ed times, Her­itage con­tin­ues to close­ly mon­i­tor the mar­kets and work to en­sure that the val­ue gained from the ex­port and sale of the coun­try's crude is ful­ly max­i­mized..
Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um is com­mit­ted to ful­fill­ing its man­date and be­ing a source of pride for Trinidad and To­ba­go by fo­cus­ing on prof­itabil­i­ty, op­er­a­tional ex­cel­lence and be­ing a per­for­mance dri­ven oil and gas com­pa­ny.