Barbados on funding drive for oil exploration

Barbados’ government says it is looking for money to restart onshore oil exploration programs to arrest a worrying decline in daily production.

Down to now about 400 barrels a day from a peak of approximately 1,700, the National Oil Company wants to quickly raise more than $30 million by year end to restart the drilling of new wells as not much has been done in this regard in the past five years.

“We have not increased oil production recently. We would need to restart our drilling program. We are looking at over the next 12 months or so. You have to raise capital for it. It’s a problem raising the cash. So once we have raised the cash we can do it,” Chief Executive James Browne told the local Today newspaper this week.

Along with Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad, Barbados is the smallest of the producers in CARICOM and like Suriname, all of its production comes from onshore rather than offshore wells.

The publication noted that there are dozens of idle wells. From a total of about 240 oil and associated gas wells in the system, no more than 100 are producing any oil. Barbados usually finds small amounts of crude at between 2,000-6,000 feet.

With the future of its onshore portfolio not as bright as its southeastern neighbor Guyana at nearly 400,000 barrels daily, authorities are looking to offshore drilling to keep the industry afloat and guarantee energy security for the Eastern Caribbean island.

The energy department and cabinet are soon to examine bids for 22 offshore blocks which have been put out to international tender last year. Barbados is confident that being in the general geographic area with oil and gas-rich Trinidad and Guyana, that it should have abundant offshore oil and gas deposits.

Government recently announced a postponement of the licensing from the beginning of December to around now following lobbying from interested companies. The firms said they needed more time to evaluate 2 and 3D seismic data before making investment decisions.

“Based on the fact that several companies have requested additional time to evaluate the acreage and data, the government of Barbados has made the difficult decision to postpone the permit round for this short period of time in order to comply with those requests and to address critical make changes to the legislative and licensing frameworks that will enable the country to improve the efficiency and ease of doing business within the sector,” an announcement had stated. This is the second time that the bidding round has been postponed.

Barbados had sold much of its excess daily production to Trinidad for its now shuttered Petrotrin Refinery. Energy Minister Kerrie Symmonds says the country is energized by the number of discoveries in waters off its CARICOM neighbors.

“Based on the seismic data, there is every good reason to believe that Barbados may be a missing piece in what is becoming a red zone of gas discoveries in the Caribbean and quite frankly, in the world,” he said recently.