The Leader of the Opposition, the Honourable Kamla Persad Bissessar has issued a press statement calling for changes to the upstream fiscal regime to encourage investment and to increase production. The opposition leader’s statement focused on exciting the investing community in the increased production of crude oil, in particular.
The statement noted that while there were changes to the supplemental petroleum tax for oil produced from new wells in shallow water marine areas introduced in 2022, but argued that these have proven difficult to administer.
Persad Bissessar made a key recommendation with the intention of freeing up capital for investment by operators. According to the statement, “to stimulate drilling and by extension oil production, further changes must be made to the Petroleum Taxes Act Chap 75:04 section 9(1) to increase the sustainability incentive for SPT from a discount of 20% applied to the SPT rate for mature marine oil fields and small marine oil fields to a discount of between 30% and 35%.”
It was stated that, “This would leave companies with more cash for reinvestment in operations which would cause increases in jobs, new drilling, new demand for energy services and ultimately new oil production.”
Persad Bissessar urged the government to act immediately.