The search for oil by Nabi Oil and Gas Inc, a new entrant to the petroleum exploration industry, at Mahaica/Mahaicony appears to have come to a standstill.
“The project [is] no longer in operation,” an official at the company said when Stabroek News contacted the firm’s office on Thursday. Anthony Syms, the Managing Director of the company has returned to Trinidad, the employee said. The call was abruptly terminated when another official enquired who was making the queries.
Last November, the company announced that it had commenced onshore activities in Mahaica/ Mahaicony and hoped given the evidence unearthed that it would be able to find commercial quantities of hydrocarbons. During a media tour of the site for the ongoing exploration along the De Hoop Branch Road, one of three such onshore petroleum exploration campaigns, officials of the company, a subsidiary of the Nabi Construction Company, said that some $70 million had been spent in the current efforts.
President of Hydrocar-bon Imaging Services Inc Bob Clark had said, “Basically we are very encouraged by the trends that we see. Now the work is afoot where we find the boundaries and see the commercial viability.” The survey method that was used is what is known in the industry as surface or fluid logging.
When he was asked how soon the company would know what amounts are there, Clark had said that his company could have an answer within weeks. He had said that when the answer is given, further analyses would be needed to determine cost effectiveness before the next steps could be determined. He had said too that since the occurrence of oil and gas would not likely stop at the shoreline, the company will also be conducting surveys offshore in due course.
Syms had noted that the company started in the last part of 2010 and it acquired a lease for land at Mahaica/Mahaicony in 2012. “We got into an arrangement with hydrocarbon imaging in mid-2013 and they started their homework and now we are out here picking as much data as is humanly possible,” he had said.
