An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

BpTT an­nounced yes­ter­day that it made the fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion (FID) to pro­ceed with the Gin­ger gas de­vel­op­ment, while achiev­ing ex­plo­ration suc­cess at its Frangi­pani well.  

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, bpTT said tak­ing FID on Gin­ger and dis­cov­er­ing gas at Frangi­pani are the lat­est demon­stra­tions of up­stream ac­tiv­i­ty this year for the com­pa­ny, which is in line with its strat­e­gy to grow its oil and gas busi­ness.

The Gin­ger de­vel­op­ment, as well as bpTT’s Cypre gas project, sched­uled to start up in 2025, are part of its strat­e­gy of max­i­miz­ing pro­duc­tion from ex­ist­ing acreage and de­vel­op­ing cap­i­tal-ef­fi­cient projects that tie in­to ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

At peak, the Gin­ger de­vel­op­ment is ex­pect­ed to have the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce av­er­age gas pro­duc­tion of 62,000 bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent per day (336 mmss­cfd), bpTT said.

The en­er­gy com­pa­ny said Gin­ger will be­come bpTT’s fourth sub­sea project and will in­clude four sub-sea wells and sub-sea trees tied back to bpTT’s ex­ist­ing ma­hogany B plat­form.

At the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said this an­nounce­ment shows the work that is be­ing done to de­vel­op T&T's en­er­gy re­sources.

“BpTT an­nounced the fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion on Gin­ger gas de­vel­op­ment, which is a gas project that will come in 2027.  As well as their ex­plo­ration suc­cess at Frangi­pani, what we call in­fill drilling which is go­ing in­to fields where there have al­ready been ex­ploit­ing the gas but they think they have found more hy­dro­car­bons,” Young said.

Speak­ing on the Ca­lyp­so field project, the Prime Min­is­ter re­it­er­at­ed that the Gov­ern­ment has been very en­gaged with Wood­side and bpTT, the two part­ners, on mak­ing the field, which is in this coun­try’s deep wa­ter, a re­al­i­ty.

“The Gov­ern­ment com­plet­ed dis­cus­sions and the ne­go­ti­a­tions on the fis­cal terms some time ago and it was then up to bp and Wood­side to work out how they would be ex­e­cut­ing the project. We con­tin­ue to be en­gaged with them. And I am told that in the next few weeks, we should be able to come back to the pop­u­la­tion if they don’t do it be­fore us and make an­nounce­ments as to what is go­ing on there. But we have pur­sued Ca­lyp­so and have tak­en it quite a far way in be­com­ing a re­al­i­ty,” Young de­tailed.

On Wednes­day, for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ra­ma­rine said the Ca­lyp­so project should have start­ed pro­duc­ing nat­ur­al gas two years ago.  

“To this day, that project has not achieved a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion and by the time we get to that, it's an­oth­er five years to first gas. This is one of the rea­sons why the coun­try finds it­self be­hind the eight ball,” he lament­ed.

Lo­cat­ed 220 kilo­me­tres off the east coast of Trinidad in 2,100 me­tres of wa­ter, the Ca­lyp­so field is es­ti­mat­ed to hold 90.6 bcm (3.2 tcf) of nat­ur­al gas. It is li­censed to Wood­side, with a 70 per cent par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est, and part­ner bp, which holds 30 per cent.