The 2011 Trinidad Offshore Bid Round: Results And Expectations For Future Exploration

Without a doubt, Trinidad and Tobago has been blessed with oil and gas. It was in 2009 that the nation celebrated one hundred years of commercial oil production. This coupled with the discovery of the world's largest pitch lake over a hundred years prior to that certainly cements this country in the history of world oil. We can quite literally map Trinidad’s energy progress from oil into gas and LNG, even counting the many downstream industries such as urea, ammonia and methanol which have become milestones on an international scale. The birth and continued development of the downstream sectors relies heavily on the exploratory expansion of open and idle acreages by aggressive companies chosen by a transparent but extensive Competitive Bid Round Process. This process is fully implemented and governed by the Ministry of Energy and Energy Affairs under the Petroleum Act which is law in Trinidad. Production Sharing Contracts are issued and further negotiated with selected companies to commence the mandatory work programme. The Competitive Bid Rounds are by and large one of the founding pillars of growth and success in our twin island republic. Throughout the years, the CBR has evolved to reflect changes in markets, prices, demands, increased costs of exploration, socio and economic/cultural reasons but this is done to always insure competitiveness on a global scale. As a direct result of the timely production and efficient management of Competitive Bid Rounds and Production Sharing Contracts today, Trinidad has over 50 defined acreages with nearly half operated by major companies (onshore and offshore) like BP, BG, EOG, Chevron, Repsol, BHP, Niko, Centrica. Total production for oil is 103,000 bopd and over 4 bcf of gas extracted per day (70% LNG supply to Eastern US comes from Trinidad from the island's 4 LNG Trains). There are also 5 methanol plants with commensurate numbers for ammonia, urea and the newly launched AUM (for melanine) plant. The main thrust for the future is tuning the CBOs to attract deepwater players in arguably, Trinidad's final frontier region Deep Water. To this end, in 2011 we will award a series of new deepwater PSCs for immediate commencement of exploration...