The board of Aus­tralian out­fit BHP has ap­proved its more than $3 bil­lion Ru­by and Delaware project in T&T. The com­pa­ny to­day an­nounced the de­ci­sion to go ahead with the project which it ex­pects will add 16,000 bar­rels of oil to T&T’s crude pro­duc­tion, or at cur­rent lev­els in­crease the coun­try’s to­tal pro­duc­tion by 27 per cent.

It not­ed that its con­tri­bu­tion to the project will be $1.92 bil­lion with the oth­er $1.08 bil­lion com­ing from Stare-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny.

In a re­lease on the com­pa­ny’s web­site it said: “The project has es­ti­mat­ed re­cov­er­able 2C re­sources of 13.2 mil­lion bar­rels of oil and 274 bil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al. First pro­duc­tion is ex­pect­ed in the 2021 cal­en­dar year and is es­ti­mat­ed to in­crease pro­duc­tion by 16,000 bar­rels of oil per day (bop/d) and 80 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day (MM­scf/d) gross at its peak.”

The Ru­by Project is lo­cat­ed in the Block 3(a) de­vel­op­ment area of the North East coast, close to To­co.

“The project con­sists of five pro­duc­tion wells tied back util­is­ing the la­tent ca­pac­i­ty of the ex­ist­ing pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties, proven tech­nol­o­gy of the ex­ist­ing op­er­at­ed as­set, and new­ly ac­quired ocean bot­tom node seis­mic imag­ing.” The com­pa­ny’s re­lease read.

BHP Pres­i­dent Op­er­a­tions Pe­tro­le­um Geral­dine Slat­tery said: “This is an im­por­tant mile­stone for BHP in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Ru­by aligns well with our strat­e­gy of max­imis­ing val­ue from our ex­ist­ing as­sets, bring­ing com­pet­i­tive near term val­ue and vol­ume growth.”

BHP, as the op­er­a­tor, holds a 68.46 per cent in­ter­est, and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC) hold the re­main­ing 20.13 per cent and 11.41 per cent in­ter­est, re­spec­tive­ly. The Block 3(a) Joint Op­er­at­ing Agree­ment re­quires at least two par­ties and 65 per cent of the work­ing in­ter­est to ap­prove the in­vest­ment.