Pe­ter Christo­pher

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Faced with a ma­jor fall in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion BP Trinidad and To­ba­go (BPTT) yes­ter­day an­nounced the ar­rival of its Joe Dou­glas Drill Rig which it hopes will help turn its for­tunes around and lead to high­er pro­duc­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy in­dus­tries, in the last two years BPTT’s dai­ly pro­duc­tion has de­clined by al­most half, av­er­ag­ing now just over one bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day (bcf/d), when com­pared to 2019 when the fig­ure was clos­er to 2 bcf/d.

In a me­dia re­lease the com­pa­ny said it was look­ing for­ward to its in­fill drilling pro­gramme which will in­clude both ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment drilling in its Colum­bus Basin acreage.

The re­lease stat­ed the rig will be pro­ceed­ing to the com­pa­ny’s Man­go Field which is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 48 kilo­me­tres off the Ga­le­o­ta Point off the coast of Guayagua­yare.

The Man­go field was a sig­nif­i­cant dis­cov­ery for BPTT, with es­ti­mat­ed re­cov­er­able re­serves of over 2 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas. It played a cru­cial role in sup­ply­ing gas to At­lantic LNG and BPTT is hop­ing it could get more out of its as­set.

The com­pa­ny said it will com­mence a drilling pro­gramme in ear­ly Oc­to­ber up­on the rig’s ar­rival there.

This drilling pro­gramme, BPTT said is key for BPTT to con­tin­ue to find and de­vel­op small pools of re­sources with­in the Colum­bus Basin.

Claire Fitz­patrick, out­go­ing re­gion­al pres­i­dent, BPTT said, “We are ex­cit­ed to wel­come back the Joe Dou­glas drilling rig to BPTT. This rig sig­nals the re­sump­tion of our small pools (in­fill) drilling pro­gramme. This drilling pro­gramme is aimed at get­ting af­ter small­er pools of re­sources in the Colum­bus Basin. These small­er pools are close to our ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture which means we can bring gas on­line quick­ly—this will help de­liv­er the se­cure, af­ford­able and low­er car­bon en­er­gy that the world needs.”

The first phase of the drilling pro­gramme will in­volve de­vel­op­ment drilling of three wells in the Man­go field and one well in the Savonette field. The com­pa­ny said if this drilling phase is suc­cess­ful, these gas re­sources will be processed through the ex­ist­ing Man­go and Savonette pro­duc­tion plat­forms and it could add pro­duc­tion in late 2022/ear­ly 2023.

The sec­ond phase of the drilling pro­gram will in­clude the po­ten­tial for three ad­di­tion­al wells in the An­gelin field and this phase is cur­rent­ly pro­gress­ing through the sanc­tion process.