…Energy Minister refers to global shift away from hydrocarbons
(Trinidad Guardian) T&T has received six bids on four blocks from BP, Shell and EOG Resources in the 2023 shallow water auction to explore for oil and gas.
This means, that nine of the 13 blocks did not receive any interest as the bids came to a close.
The results were announced by Minister of Energy Stuart Young at a news conference yesterday which saw BP, Shell and EOG Resources Trinidad Ltd, being the only companies to bid on blocks.
These entities are already operating in T&T.
EOG Resources was the most active with bids on three blocks.
The modified U block was the one sought after most with BP, Shell and EOG Resources offering bids.
In his address at the news conference, Young said a decision would be made within the next four months to announce the winners.
The Energy Minister said that T&T is a mature province and having regard to the global shift away from hydrocarbon exploration, it would be difficult to attract new entities. Young also said many energy companies have taken decisions not to invest in new territories.
“In the spirit of boosting interest in the bid-round, the ministry embarked on a review of the bidding process and several changes were made to incentivise the process.
“The model production sharing contract was also reviewed and changes were made to reflect current energy industry climate; inclusive of the introduction of an infrastructure-sharing policy,” he explained.
Young added the ministry was committed to a transparent and fair bidding process.
Bidders will be evaluated on the basis of a point system. The evaluation will be conducted by a technical evaluation team comprising senior officials of the Ministry of Energy, Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Attorney General.
Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) shall be issued to the successful bidders initially for a period of eight years.
Upon the achievement of a commercial discovery, PSCs may be renewed for a term of 25 years from the effective date of the contract.
Following the 2021 deepwater competitive bidding round and the 2022 onshore/nearshore competitive bidding round, this shallow water bidding round was the third in a series of bid rounds conducted by the Ministry of Energy.
Speaking to members of the media yesterday, bpTT president David Campbell said T&T ought to have confidence in its upstream sector.
“There is a future here and the minister also mentioned a further deepwater bid round to come and of course we have the existing deepwater round that finish last year that we teamed up with our partner Shell. I think there is a lot of interest, and we should take some confidence from that,” he said.