Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of Energy and Energy Affairs has extended the deadline for bids on its deepwater blocks to Sept. 4. Bids were originally due by July 30.
The ministry’s revision follows a 5-month delay in the opening of the bid round itself, which was moved from to Apr. 5 from November 2011.
The Ministry of Energy told OGJ that the delay was agreed upon after certain major oil firms asked for more time to get their respective management to agree to their bid offers.
“We were told by some companies that they did not have enough time to work through their processes which would see a potential bid moving up the chain of command and being sanctioned,” an energy ministry offical said. “This is why we decided to extend the bid round by just over a month.”
The six blocks on offer are TTDAA 1, TTDAA 5, TTDAA 6, TTDAA 28, TTDAA 29 and Block 25(a). They on average exceed 100,000 hectares and lie in 600-1,500 m of water.
The Caribbean twin-island has revised its production-sharing contract for the deep water to make it more competitive. The Ministry of Energy said of the bid round: “It will be different from past rounds, taking advantage of revised contractual terms, a more transparent bid evaluation process, and fiscal incentives designed to attract potential investors while optimizing government revenues. The acreage offers a mix of water depths, hydrocarbon play-types and production potential. Risk assessment in all of the blocks is facilitated by previously acquired 2D and 3D seismic data, well penetrations, and the proximity of these blocks to known hydrocarbon pools and production.”
BP PLC has signed PSCs for two blocks in the last deepwater bid round and the Caribbean island is still in negotiations with a consortium of BHP Billiton and Repsol YPF for a third block. Trinidad and Tobago's deep water had not been explored before although it has produced billions of barrels of oil off its continental shelf and on land and had 21 tcf of gas in it reserves.
