The need for speed

25th March 2026

Accelerating the pace of delivery has been a major theme at this year’s CERA Week. 

In a panel on developing the Atlantic margin, the Senior Vice President at Exxon in charge of deepwater developments, Hunter Farris gave the case of Trinidad & Tobago as a good recent example of moving fast through the early approval process.  He reported how Exxon had signed a production sharing contract for the ultra-deepwater block TTUD1 in August 2025, received environmental approvals for their seismic campaign in December 2025, began to collect seismic data in January 2026 and were already beginning early processing of the data.    

Hunter Farris reported that the first exploration well could be drilled as early as next year. 

He did not mention the speed at which the signing of the PSC took place, which was equally as impressive, with discussions starting in the final quarter of 2024 to having the block signed in August 2025, with a national election and change of government in the middle of the negotiations. 

The pace of this project is significantly quicker than the benchmarks that were reported in the 2019 Energy Chamber commissioned study by Kenesjay Systems on the approval process. That study indicated that it typically took almost two years for a PSC to be negotiated and signed and a further six months for environmental approvals before a seismic campaign could begin. It typically took over four years from a block being offered before a first exploration well could be spudded.  If all goes well that could be cut almost in half based on the current timelines. 

Hunter Farris has been very involved in Exxon’s unprecedented success in Guyana, where they progressed from exploration success to first oil via an FPSO in under four years. He reported that one of the reasons that Exxon were able to move fast in Trinidad & Tobago is that they mobilised the expertise they had gained in Guyana. He explained that if they did have a commercial find in T&T, they would be able to use the Guyana model to fast-track developments in Trinidad.  So, the mature player with over a century of expertise might just be learning some new tricks from the new kid on the block.