BHP Bil­li­ton’s Ru­by field will not mean any net ad­di­tion­al gas will be added to the com­pa­ny or T&T’s nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion but would in­stead be used to keep present pro­duc­tion at peak lev­els for a longer time.

Coun­try Man­ag­er of BHP T&T, Michael Stone, told Guardian Me­dia that at present, BHP pro­duces from its An­gos­tu­ra field be­tween 300 and 360 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day (mm­scf/d) and Ru­by will al­low it to main­tain pro­duc­tion in the high­er range.

He ex­plained, “With just An­gos­tu­ra it ranges be­tween 300mm­scf/d and 360mm­scf/d. What we would ex­pect Cur­tis is with the 80mm­scf/d com­ing on from Ru­by, it al­lows us to pro­duce at the up­per end of that range sus­tain­ably, but it’s not go­ing to in­crease be­yond the up­per end of that range.

“What it’s go­ing to do, for­tu­nate­ly, is it’s go­ing to elon­gate the pro­file and al­low us to pro­duce at the high­er end of that range for the longer pe­ri­od of time, but it’s not go­ing to take us be­yond that up­per end of the range to an­swer your ques­tion.”

On Tues­day, BHP an­nounced first oil pro­duc­tion from Ru­by.

The field is lo­cat­ed off­shore Trinidad and To­ba­go in the shal­low wa­ter in Block 3(a) with­in the Greater An­gos­tu­ra Field. The de­vel­op­ment con­sists of both oil and gas pro­duc­tion from the Ru­by and Delaware reser­voirs via five pro­duc­tion wells and one gas in­jec­tor well tied back in­to ex­ist­ing An­gos­tu­ra pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

The com­pa­ny said Ru­by close­ly aligns with BHP’s Pe­tro­le­um strat­e­gy of ad­vanc­ing high re­turn growth op­por­tu­ni­ties tied back to es­tab­lished in­fra­struc­ture.

“At com­ple­tion, Ru­by is ex­pect­ed to have ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce up to 16,000 gross bar­rels of oil per day and 80 mil­lion gross stan­dard cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day.

Stone ex­plained that BHP’s pro­duc­tion is al­so im­pact­ed by de­mand since it moves based on the down­stream need for gas and what is hap­pen­ing to oth­er up­stream op­er­a­tors.

“Right now our gas pro­duc­tion from just An­gos­tu­ra ranges be­tween 300 and 360 but it de­pends very much on down­stream de­mand, and as you can imag­ine that de­mand has been a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to pre­dict be­cause of down­stream ac­tiv­i­ty and oth­er up­stream op­er­a­tors who have in­ter­rup­tions and so on.” Stone told Guardian Me­dia.

In mak­ing the an­nounce­ment of first oil on Tues­day BHP Pres­i­dent Pe­tro­le­um, Geral­dine Slat­tery said: “The start-up of Ru­by rep­re­sents con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment of BHP’s oil and gas pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go, re-en­forces the qual­i­ty of the re­source and its in­vest­ment com­pet­i­tive­ness. An Ocean Bot­tom Node (OBN) seis­mic sur­vey ac­quired by BHP and the Block 3(a) part­ners in 2018, was utilised to il­lu­mi­nate and op­ti­mal­ly po­si­tion the Ru­by Project de­vel­op­ment wells.

“This marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for our Pe­tro­le­um busi­ness and our fu­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

For Stone achiev­ing first oil safe­ly and ahead of sched­ule re­flect­ed the tenac­i­ty of the Ru­by project team to­geth­er with its in­dus­try and Gov­ern­ment part­ners who per­se­vered to de­liv­er this project amid a glob­al pan­dem­ic.

“This im­por­tant mile­stone al­so high­lights BHP’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to do­ing busi­ness in Trinidad and To­ba­go as we cel­e­brate 25 years of op­er­a­tions here this year.” He not­ed.

BHP last month cel­e­brat­ed 25 years in T&T and Stone spoke about the com­pa­ny’s fu­ture plans with Guardian Me­dia’s Lead Ed­i­tor Cur­tis Williams which will be pub­lish in de­tail in the Sun­day’s Busi­ness Guardian.