Cur­tis Williams

cur­tisju­nior­williams@gmail.com

La Brea based Trinidad Off­shore Fab­ri­ca­tors Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (TOF­CO) has been award­ed a con­tract to build the jack­et for bpTT’s lat­est off­shore de­vel­op­ment, Cas­sia C. In con­firm­ing the award of the con­tract, com­pa­ny of­fi­cials said it will cre­ate an ad­di­tion­al 50 jobs.

This con­tract is much small­er than the Ju­niper project which was award­ed for both the jack­et and top­side. This time around, the top­side has been award­ed to Mc­Der­moth and will be con­struct­ed in Mex­i­co.

How­ev­er, this is still a mi­ni vic­to­ry for T&T as bpTT’s last plat­form, con­struct­ed for the An­gelin field, was built en­tire­ly in Mex­i­co. At that time the com­pa­ny ex­plained that it could not trust that the plat­form would be de­liv­ered on time be­cause of protests in La Brea that caus­es work dis­rup­tion at TOF­CO’s op­er­a­tions. Since then, the coun­try has been los­ing mon­ey and busi­ness as the fall-out from the protests con­tin­ue.

It is ex­pect­ed that con­struc­tion will take place over one year.

The loss of the An­gelin plat­form project prompt­ed Gov­ern­ment ear­li­er this year to hold a town meet­ing in La Brea at which En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan along with MP for the area Nicole Oliv­erre ad­dressed res­i­dents.

Oliv­erre said: “We were all great­ly dis­ap­point­ed by the loss of An­gelin, not just to La Brea, but to Trinidad and To­ba­go. An­gelin is a small­er plat­form than Ju­niper but you have an idea the kind of val­ue we lost when An­gelin was sent to Mex­i­co.

“Min­is­ter Khan and I re­cent­ly paid a vis­it to the Mex­i­can fab­ri­ca­tion yard where the An­gelin plat­form is be­ing built. Apart from the size, it’s a much larg­er land area. There is noth­ing they are do­ing there that we couldn’t do here in La Brea.”

She added: “We must not be in­su­lar when it comes to jobs in the area. If we say that jobs in La Brea must on­ly go to the peo­ple from La Brea, then the rest of the coun­try can say the same thing and not want La Brea peo­ple to work else­where. Yes, we put La Brea first but in the same way, peo­ple from La Brea work in Point Lisas and Port of Spain and through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, once you are a cit­i­zen of this coun­try we can­not de­bar any­one from com­ing here to work.”

A jack­et refers, in oil and gas ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion, to the steel frame sup­port­ing the deck and the top­sides on a fixed off­shore plat­form.

Mean­while, bpTT will this week an­nounce that it has sanc­tioned its Cas­sia C project which has been long in the mak­ing, well-placed sources at the com­pa­ny have con­firmed.

The project will ac­cess low-pres­sure re­serves via a new com­pres­sion plat­form bridge linked to the ex­ist­ing Cas­sia B hub. It in­cludes a new un­manned com­pres­sion plat­form for the ex­ist­ing Cas­sia com­plex. Cas­sia C is bpTT’s third Cas­sia plat­form, han­dling gas com­ing from its op­er­a­tions in the pro­lif­ic Colum­bus basin.

The project will add 300 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of gas to bpTT’s pro­duc­tion when it be­gins in 2020.