Aleem Khan

The three largest oil and gas com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in T&T yes­ter­day said their ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion plans in 2015 re­main in­tact.The coun­try's largest oil and gas pro­duc­ers, the UK's bpTT, Spain's Rep­sol and the UK's BG Group, all told the T&T Guardian they are go­ing ahead with plans to in­vest to in­crease hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­tion.

"BPTT plans to con­tin­ue its projects cur­rent­ly in progress and ap­proved for 2015 while mon­i­tor­ing falling hy­dro­car­bon prices. BP al­ways has plans that con­sid­er that com­mod­i­ty prices can fall.

"Like its par­ent com­pa­ny, bpTT's strate­gic fo­cus con­tin­ues to be to max­imise ef­fi­cien­cy and man­age cost in the cur­rent price en­vi­ron­ment. Any planned spend re­lat­ed to safe­ty and in­tegri­ty works will not be af­fect­ed. BPTT's re­sponse to falling hy­dro­car­bon prices will seek to en­sure projects are ex­e­cut­ed to bring max­i­mum val­ue to T&T and to the BP group," the com­pa­ny's lo­cal press of­fice said.

"We can con­firm that Rep­sol will con­tin­ue its planned ac­tiv­i­ties in 2015. This in­cludes the drilling of three de­vel­op­men­tal wells with­in our op­er­at­ed Teak Samaan Poui (TSP) field. The ob­jec­tive of this drilling pro­gramme is to in­crease pro­duc­tion of the as­sets," Rep­sol's com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fice said.

While BG Group dis­clos­es the cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture it makes across its busi­ness each year, it does not pro­vide fore­casts for its on­go­ing, in­di­vid­ual op­er­a­tions, the com­pa­ny's Lon­don head­quar­ters said. The BG Group said it plans to give its out­look for group cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture as part of its an­nu­al re­sults in Feb­ru­ary. This will take ac­count of any changes to as­sump­tions about com­mod­i­ty prices, the com­pa­ny said.

"In re­la­tion to T&T, as you would know, our cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture there has been high­er in 2014 than in re­cent years, re­flect­ing de­vel­op­ment of the Starfish field where the first new well start­ed pro­duc­tion in ear­ly De­cem­ber. We would an­tic­i­pate de­vel­op­ment of Starfish to con­tin­ue in 2015," the BG Group state­ment said.BHP Bil­li­ton, the largest deep wa­ter acreage hold­er in T&T, was con­tact­ed, but up to press time, had not re­spond­ed.

Al­beit a small­er play­er, Cal­gary-based Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration Inc, al­so yes­ter­day in a state­ment, said its 2015 cap­i­tal strat­e­gy "will see the com­pa­ny ex­e­cute its an­nu­al cap­i­tal pro­gramme with­in re­al­ized cash flows. The board will re­view and ap­prove the com­pa­ny's cap­i­tal bud­get on a quar­ter­ly ba­sis with a fo­cus on op­ti­miz­ing spend­ing in re­sponse to chang­ing com­mod­i­ty prices and in­dus­try con­di­tions."

Based on its suc­cess­ful 2014 T&T de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme, the com­pa­ny has elect­ed to con­tin­ue to fo­cus on its low risk drilling in­ven­to­ry in T&T and has as­sumed an av­er­age Brent oil price of US$70 as the bench­mark for its 2015 cap­i­tal guid­ance. With a fo­cus on con­sis­tent 2015 pro­duc­tion growth, the com­pa­ny an­tic­i­pates cor­po­rate funds flow in the range of CA$13 to CA$14 mil­lion with cor­po­rate av­er­age an­nu­al oil vol­umes of 2,700 to 2,900 bar­rels per day (bbls/d).

The com­pa­ny's orig­i­nal 2014/15 guid­ance fore­cast a con­tin­u­ous two rig drilling pro­gramme in T&T. Drilling was re­duced to a one rig pro­gramme in late 2014 which al­lowed the com­pa­ny to pre­serve cap­i­tal while still achiev­ing 2014 pro­duc­tion goals, the state­ment said.