BGTT ex­pects to sup­ply the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC), and liqui­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) pro­duc­er At­lantic with more gas from a new source, the lo­cal unit of the UK-based oil and gas com­pa­ny said in a state­ment yes­ter­day. In re­sponse to an e-mail query, the com­pa­ny said: "Whilst we can't com­ment on re­serves at this time, Starfish is an im­por­tant de­vel­op­ment for BGTT and nat­ur­al gas pro­duced from the field will be trans­port­ed through ex­ist­ing pipelines to sup­ply con­trac­tu­al com­mit­ments with NGC and At­lantic LNG."

First gas from the Starfish field is ex­pect­ed in the fourth quar­ter of 2014, the com­pa­ny said, broad­en­ing the pre­vi­ous fore­cast of gas by Oc­to­ber. The Starfish project was sanc­tioned in 2012. The Starfish field, which was dis­cov­ered in 1998, strad­dles Block 5(a) and Block E and forms part of the East Coast Ma­rine Area (EC­MA). EC­MA is op­er­at­ed by BG Group sub­sidiaries on be­half of the joint ven­ture with Chevron T&T Re­sources SRL. The BG Group and Chevron each holds a 50 per cent par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est in the de­vel­op­ment."The Starfish project con­sists of a ten-kilo­me­tre sub­sea tieback to the Dol­phin A plat­form where the gas will be processed," BGTT said.

As part of the Starfish de­vel­op­ment in the EC­MA, BGTT said it is right now "con­duct­ing drilling and sub­sea tieback ac­tiv­i­ties along with plat­form mod­i­fi­ca­tions in or­der to achieve first gas in Q4 2014."These ac­tiv­i­ties, the com­pa­ny said, have re­quired the planned shut-ins of the off­shore fa­cil­i­ty with­in the EC­MA to safe­ly com­plete spe­cif­ic work-scopes. BGTT said it has "an­oth­er planned shut­down in Oc­to­ber as­so­ci­at­ed with the Starfish de­vel­op­ment and is work­ing to op­ti­mise these ac­tiv­i­ties to min­imise im­pact to gas pro­duc­tion. It is im­por­tant to note that these shut­downs are es­sen­tial in prepar­ing the fa­cil­i­ty to re­ceive gas from the Starfish de­vel­op­ment. BGTT con­tin­ues to col­lab­o­rate with stake­hold­ers with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor in or­der to min­imise the im­pact of these planned ac­tiv­i­ties."

BGTT has been ac­tive in the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor since 1989. It has op­er­a­tions off­shore in the East Coast and North Coast Ma­rine Ar­eas, as well as in the on­shore Cen­tral Block. It al­so man­ages BG Group's share­hold­er in­ter­ests in At­lantic LNG.