Aleem Khan

The Min­istry of En­er­gy said T&T's oil pro­duc­tion hit a two-year high in Sep­tem­ber. An Oc­to­ber 7 re­lease from the min­istry said na­tion­al oil pro­duc­tion av­er­aged 84,848 bar­rels per day, the high­est in two years, and that the in­crease in pro­duc­tion took place year-on-year and month-on-month.In Au­gust, pro­duc­tion av­er­aged 82,184 bar­rels of oil per day (bopd) and in Sep­tem­ber 2013, the na­tion­al av­er­age pro­duc­tion was 81,140 bopd.

The re­lease was is­sued af­ter an Oc­to­ber 3 meet­ing of En­er­gy Min­istry of­fi­cials with the chair­man, di­rec­tors, and man­age­ment of Lon­don-list­ed LGO plc (for­mer­ly Leni Gas & Oil). It was the first meet­ing be­tween En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine and new LGO chair­man Stephen (Steve) Thomas Hor­ton who was ap­point­ed on Au­gust 27. Hor­ton had been a non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny since Feb­ru­ary 2011 but re­placed founder David Leni­gas who had been the com­pa­ny chair­man since its in­cor­po­ra­tion in Au­gust 2006.

At the Goudron field in Guayagua­yare, LGO has been find­ing oil in every well it has drilled. The British com­pa­ny has a com­mit­ment to the gov­ern­ment to drill 30 wells, and the finds have been help­ing to boost on­shore and na­tion­al pro­duc­tion num­bers. Ram­nar­ine and British High Com­mis­sion­er Arthur Snell vis­it­ed Goudron in Oc­to­ber last year.

Since then LGO's pro­duc­tion has more than dou­bled, climb­ing from 266 bopd (Oc­to­ber 2013) to 700 bopd (Oc­to­ber 2014). Ram­nar­ine said in the state­ment that he was "pleased with the progress be­ing made by LGO in Goudron and looked for­ward to even more oil pro­duc­tion in 2015."Yes­ter­day, LGO an­nounced it has al­ready start­ed to sell the in­creased oil pro­duc­tion and had "made the first sale from the new­ly com­mis­sioned sales tank at the Goudron Field.

"A to­tal of 1,886 bar­rels of crude oil were shipped from the new sales tank to the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery," LGO said.LGO CEO Neil Rit­son said: "A fur­ther mile­stone in field op­er­a­tions was reached yes­ter­day with the first oil sale from the new­ly com­mis­sioned 2,000 bar­rel fa­cil­i­ties. Pro­duc­tion from the field can now be raised with­out any fur­ther im­me­di­ate con­straints im­posed by the sales in­fra­struc­ture."

Pre­vi­ous max­i­mum dai­ly sales were lim­it­ed to around 750 bar­rels and the new in­fra­struc­ture will be ca­pa­ble of han­dling oil sales through the re­main­der of 2014 and to mid-2015 when a lease au­to­mat­ic cus­tody trans­fer (LACT) me­ter is ex­pect­ed to be in­stalled to han­dle high­er sales vol­umes as pro­duc­tion con­tin­ues to ramp up with the on­go­ing drilling pro­gramme, the com­pa­ny said.

Op­ti­mi­sa­tion of the flow rates from the four wells now pro­duc­ing on Pad 2–GY-665 to GY-668–will now con­tin­ue un­re­strict­ed by fa­cil­i­ties through­put. This process of op­ti­mi­sa­tion is ex­pect­ed to take ap­prox­i­mate­ly two weeks to com­plete, LGO said.

LGO said: "Fol­low­ing the ex­cel­lent pro­duc­tion re­sults ob­tained in the wells to date it has been deemed jus­ti­fied to fur­ther op­ti­mise the well de­sign to achieve ide­al drilling con­di­tions and fu­ture pro­duc­tion po­ten­tial at the Gros Morne Sand­stone. The new well de­sign will be used in all fu­ture wells that tar­get the Gros Morne as a pri­ma­ry reser­voir."