BHP Bil­li­ton is even more con­fi­dent about find­ing large amounts of oil and gas in the deep wa­ter than it was when it bid on sev­er­al blocks in 2014.

Pres­i­dent of BHP T&T Vin­cent Pereira told Busi­ness & Mon­ey that he was very hap­py with the way the drilling cam­paign has so far gone with the com­pa­ny en­coun­ter­ing nat­ur­al gas in three of the four wells it drilled.

In a brief in­ter­view at the Hy­att Re­gency last week, Pereira said, “We are very con­fi­dent about the deep­wa­ter. We have been able to en­counter hy­dro­car­bons in three of our four wells and the pro­gramme is go­ing good.”

“Our suc­cess has been based on sev­er­al things in­clud­ing the use of tech­nol­o­gy. From the ac­qui­si­tion of our seis­mic to pro­cess­ing to the rig we hired to mak­ing de­ci­sions where to drill, it has all been dri­ven by the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy. It’s why, so far, we have had a high suc­cess rate.”

BHP Bil­li­ton has al­ready an­nounced that it found five tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf) of gas in Block TTDAA 5 where it drilled its Le Clerc Well in 2016. The com­pa­ny has al­so said it found hy­dro­car­bons in Vic­to­ria-1, al­so in Block TTDAA 5. Sources, how­ev­er, shared that the Vic­to­ria-1 dis­cov­ery is in the or­der of one tcf of gas.

The com­pa­ny al­so drilled its Bon­gos-2 well which Busi­ness & Mon­ey ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed was a sig­nif­i­cant gas dis­cov­ery in the deep wa­ter.

Mul­ti­ple sources at the com­pa­ny had con­firmed that the well did not just “en­counter hy­dro­car­bons” as was an­nounced by BHP last month but that it is a ma­jor gas dis­cov­ery hav­ing pen­e­trat­ed the three gas sands that the com­pa­ny was aim­ing at, when it first drilled the well.

Asked if he was more ex­cit­ed about the Bon­gos-2 dis­cov­ery than the 5tcf Le Clerc find, Pereira would on­ly say that he was “very ex­cit­ed about Bon­gos-2 and more in­for­ma­tion will be re­vealed in the com­ing months.”

Bon­gos-2 is lo­cat­ed in BHP’s north­ern con­tract area, east of To­ba­go in deep-wa­ter block 14.

BHP holds a 70 per cent stake in the block with re­main­der 30 per cent be­long­ing to bpTT.

So far, the com­pa­ny would on­ly re­peat the state­ment it has been mak­ing since Au­gust. It told Busi­ness and Mon­ey, “The Bon­gos-2 ex­plo­ration well was spud on 22 Ju­ly 2018 and en­coun­tered hy­dro­car­bons. Drilling is still in progress and this is all we can share at this time. As soon as we have more in­for­ma­tion I’ll let you know.”

Ac­cord­ing to sources, “We are all very pleased with this well. We were able to pen­e­trate all the gas zones we were aim­ing for and we be­lieve that apart from sig­nif­i­cant gas the struc­ture could have oil in the deep­er hori­zons.”

No oil was en­coun­tered in the Bon­gos-2 well even though it was drilled deep­er than was orig­i­nal­ly planned, but from the in­for­ma­tion gath­ered from the well it has led BHP to be­lieve that there could al­so be oil in the block.

Bon­gos-2 was spud af­ter Bon­gos 1 had ex­pe­ri­enced me­chan­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ty short­ly af­ter it was orig­i­nal­ly drilled. This would mean good news for the coun­try and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert as he pre­pares to present in 2018/2019 an­nu­al bud­get.

Sources in­di­cate that BHP plans to re­turn to the same block to drill an­oth­er well next year but Pereira would on­ly say no de­ci­sion has been tak­en.

The suc­cess in the deep­wa­ter is sure to help the coun­try’s re­serves to pro­duc­tion ra­tio when it is fi­nal­ly put on the books and with both At­lantic LNG and down­stream still in des­per­ate need for more gas it could even­tu­al­ly help with the long-term sta­bil­i­ty of the sec­tor.

The re­al­i­ty, how­ev­er, is that even with the best will these dis­cov­er­ies will take an­oth­er five to sev­en years to come to mar­ket it would put gov­ern­ment in a bet­ter po­si­tion to as­sure present in­vestors in the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor that the coun­try has gas for a long time to come and there­fore in­crease in­vestor con­fi­dence.

It may al­so al­low the gov­ern­ment to be­gin to look the pos­si­bil­i­ty of oth­er down­stream in­vest­ments in the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor and, there­fore, in­to the fu­ture in­crease the coun­try’s rev­enue streams.

The deep­wa­ter drilling cam­paign is al­so cru­cial be­cause it is where most ex­perts ex­pect the coun­try to have the best chance of find­ing large ac­cu­mu­la­tions of nat­ur­al gas and crude oil.