Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Lim­it­ed says they have com­plet­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions with the gov­ern­ment for a new ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cense. The new li­cense will al­low for the sin­gle largest off­shore ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion block on the west coast of the is­land. The area cov­ers just over 96,000 hectares of off­shore acreage. With this new agree­ment, the Gov­ern­ment will ben­e­fit from pay­ments by Her­itage amount­ing to close to 100 mil­lion dol­lars over 6 years.

The fol­low­ing is the full state­ment by Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Lim­it­ed:

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed an­nounces the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go for a new Ex­plo­ration & Pro­duc­tion li­cense in its off­shore acreage. The new li­cense was ex­e­cut­ed at a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Wednes­day 20th Jan­u­ary 2021, at the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI), Tow­er C, In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Wright­son Road, Port of Spain.

To­day’s sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny, which was chaired by Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Sen­a­tor the Ho­n­ourable Franklin Khan, is the cul­mi­na­tion of months of ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the Her­itage team and se­nior of­fi­cials at the MEEI. This new Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion Li­cense com­bines the en­tire acreage of both the pre­vi­ous Trin­mar Li­censed Area and the North Ma­rine Li­censed Area, cre­at­ing a sin­gle block that cov­ers just over 96,000 hectares of off­shore acreage. This makes it the sin­gle largest off­shore ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion block on the west coast of the is­land.

The li­cens­es for the two pre­vi­ous ar­eas ex­pired in No­vem­ber 2019. Mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial agree­ment Un­der the terms of this new agree­ment the Gov­ern­ment will ben­e­fit from pay­ments made by Her­itage over the 6-year life of the con­tract amount­ing to close to TTD$100 mil­lion dol­lars. Min­is­ter Khan said “I would like to pub­licly con­grat­u­late the per­for­mance of Her­itage over the last two years. They have been the flag­ship State en­ter­prise.

As we speak, they have made, in their first year of op­er­a­tion, a prof­it of $1.4 bil­lion, pay­ing the State in ex­cess of $800 mil­lion in tax­es and from all in­di­ca­tions they will re­peat that per­for­mance in 2020 when the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials are com­plet­ed”. Min­is­ter Khan went on to in­di­cate that the per­for­mance of Her­itage has jus­ti­fied the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­struc­ture Petrotrin and that this new li­cense will fur­ther strength­en the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance.

Ac­cord­ing to Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s Chair­man Michael Quam­i­na, “the li­cense will fur­ther un­lock the val­ue of the com­pa­ny’s off­shore re­sources through a new and more ro­bust phase of ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ty. The new li­cense pro­vides the se­cu­ri­ty we need to con­tin­ue to ex­e­cute our com­mer­cial strat­e­gy in the off­shore area.” Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ar­lene Chow elab­o­rat­ed fur­ther, “the suc­cess­ful ne­go­ti­a­tion of this new li­cense will not on­ly al­low Her­itage to progress cur­rent op­por­tu­ni­ties, but al­so carve out new prospects in the area. This will en­sure the full com­mer­cial po­ten­tial of the area is achieved, max­i­miz­ing the eco­nom­ic val­ue for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”