EOG Resources to begin exploratory drilling off Tobago

Amer­i­can en­er­gy com­pa­ny EOG Re­sources is ex­pect­ed to be­gin ex­plorato­ry drilling in To­ba­go’s wa­ters from mid-Oc­to­ber to as­sess the area’s hy­dro­car­bon po­ten­tial.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said the drilling site is about 22 kilo­me­tres off south­west To­ba­go and that one well will be drilled us­ing a mo­bile rig.

“We go­ing to see what is there, to see what can be done about it,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said that if hy­dro­car­bons are dis­cov­ered, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly would have three to four years to pre­pare to max­imise the ben­e­fits from the re­sources.

Au­gus­tine has al­so ad­vo­cat­ed for To­ba­go’s mar­itime bound­aries to be legal­ly de­fined, which he says would al­low the THA to gen­er­ate di­rect rev­enue from en­er­gy re­sources with­in its mar­itime space.

The THA is al­so seek­ing greater au­ton­o­my from cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

“To­ba­go con­tin­ues to con­tribute mean­ing­ful­ly to the na­tion­al cof­fers,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said he met with EOG rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Mon­day and asked the com­pa­ny to re-en­gage fish­er­folk so they re­main in­formed about its ac­tiv­i­ties.

“At the end of the day, we want every­body to win when EOG comes in our wa­ters.”

The To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency has al­so been en­gaged to help en­sure an ef­fec­tive re­sponse in the event of a mar­itime ac­ci­dent.