Upswing in the oil and gas industry

This may well be the most prolific period in the history of the Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) for licensing acreage for exploration. To illustrate, I make mention of several significant landmark changes during the history of the energy sector. BP one of our largest energy giant Juniper project realises approximately 1.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas by 2017. It represents one of the largest investments ever in the T&T energy sector. Repsol discovered 40 million barrels of oil in its TSP acreage. It should be noted that this oil is already on production and is adding to overall national oil production. That discovery is the fifth in the last two years and comes after discoveries by Petrotrin, Trinity and BP in 2012 and again by Trinity in late 2013. These trends signal a resurgence of the upstream component of the national energy sector. The net result is an arresting of the decline in oil production, which slumped drastically from 2006 to 2012.

The reason for this resurgence comes from the fact that the current administration has created an enabling environment for this level of investment through the introduction of a suite of fiscal incentives for companies operating in the oil and gas industry. This environment has also seen the signing of licences by three energy companies to drill for oil on land will result in the country’s oil and gas production being further boosted. The three companies, i.e. Lease Operators Ltd, Primera Oil and Gas will exploit acreage with a reserve potential of 822 million barrels of oil.

In total 63,716 hectares of land was licensed for exploration. This is approximately 12.5 per cent of the entire land mass of Trinidad and Tobago.

This dramatic upswing has never been seen in Trinidad and Tobago since the late 1970’s. With the energy industry being our greatest income generator, I can safely say that it’s placed in the right hands. Thank you Minister of Energy for a job well done.

Sita Maharajh
via email