Cur­tis Williams

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

Aus­tralian Out­fit BHP Bil­li­ton has dis­cov­ered be­tween 5 and 6.6 tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf) of nat­ur­al gas in T&T’s deep­wa­ter, ac­cord­ing to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at a news con­fer­ence to dis­cuss the re­turn of the Deep­wa­ter In­vic­tus drill ship and its spud­ding of the Broad­side 1 well, Khan said BHP had made sig­nif­i­cant nat­ur­al gas dis­cov­er­ies.

“To date BHP has drilled 10 ex­plo­ration wells, con­duct­ed 3D sur­veys in ex­cess of 21,000 square kilo­me­tres cov­er­ing its nine blocks as well as 16 un­li­censed blocks. Sev­en (7) of the ten (10) ex­plo­ration wells drilled were suc­cess­ful in find­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6.6 TCF of com­mer­cial­ly vi­able nat­ur­al gas bear­ing sands.”

When asked by Guardian Me­dia on where the 6.6 tcf of gas is lo­cat­ed, BHP’s Vice Pres­i­dent, Ex­plo­ration So­nia Scarsel­li said the com­pa­ny had on­ly de­clared its 3.5 tcf in its North­ern Li­cense which she added has fur­ther up­side po­ten­tial and was in the process of eval­u­at­ing the oth­er dis­cov­er­ies.

Khan ex­plained that from a ge­o­log­i­cal stand­point BHP holds the view of Trinidad and To­ba­go as a “world class source rock” com­pris­ing prospec­tive acreage, its re­la­tion­ship to the Orinoco Riv­er sys­tem and the great pos­si­bil­i­ty that it holds sig­nif­i­cant traps of hy­dro­car­bons.

“It con­sid­ers that Trinidad and To­ba­go is a de­po­si­tion en­vi­ron­ment sim­i­lar to the Niger Delta and the Gulf of Mex­i­co and some of the oth­er big­ger delta­ic basins....To date the com­pa­ny ex­pend­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1.0 bil­lion in ge­o­log­i­cal, geo­phys­i­cal and drilling work.” The En­er­gy Min­is­ter ex­plained.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was the fea­ture speak­er at the event and not­ed that BHP has ap­plied to the Min­istry of En­er­gy to en­ter in­to the Mar­ket De­vel­op­ment Phase for Blocks 23(a) and TTDAA 14 (BHP’s North­ern Li­cense).

He said if found to be eco­nom­ic, first gas could be as ear­ly as 2026.

Row­ley not­ed that BHP had be­gun drilling its Broad­side-1 well which is ex­pect­ed to test the oil play with­in BHP’s South­ern Deep­wa­ter Blocks, which in­cludes TTDAA 3, 5 and 6.

“If the finds of the Broad­side well are promis­ing, it can in­form the drilling of fur­ther ex­plo­ration wells in near­by blocks. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a com­mer­cial dis­cov­ery in any of Broad­side’s Miocene tar­gets could de-risk the ma­jor­i­ty of the prospec­tive re­sources iden­ti­fied by Nether­land, Sewell and As­so­ciates, Inc. (NSAI) in its au­dit of the coun­try’s crude oil re­serves and re­sources for year-end 2018.’ Row­ley not­ed.

Scarsel­li said if a dis­cov­ery is made this year in Broad­side, and it is com­mer­cial, it is un­like­ly to come to mar­ket be­fore 2028/29.

Row­ley al­so re­vealed that the Jack­et for the Ru­by plat­form was be­ing in­stalled and drilling is ex­pect­ed to com­mence in Q4 2020.

Peak oil pro­duc­tion is ex­pect­ed to be 16,000 bar­rels of oil per day in Q1 2022, with first pro­duc­tion in No­vem­ber 2021.

Broad­side-1 is tar­get­ing a much deep­er hori­zon with the plan to pen­e­trate the shal­low­ness of the in­ter­val where BHP had en­coun­tered oil seeps in the Le Clerc and Vic­to­ria wells.