A year be­hind sched­ule, lost op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T to bring on much-need­ed nat­ur­al gas in a high-priced gas and petro­chem­i­cal glob­al mar­ket, and bpTT’s Re­gion­al Pres­i­dent Claire Fitz­patrick in­sists the com­pa­ny was right to ex­port the fab­ri­cat­ing of its Cas­sia C top­side to Mex­i­co and not have the work done in La Brea.

In a brief in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian (BG) at the en­er­gy con­fer­ence Fitz­patrick was asked if in hind­sight it would have been bet­ter to fab­ri­cate the top­side in Trinidad. The bpTT pres­i­dent sim­ply re­spond­ed: “No I don’t”.

“The de­ci­sion was made to the best in­for­ma­tion avail­able at the time. None of us knew about covid, go­ing for­ward I would con­tin­ue to like to see Trinidad com­pa­nies be­ing com­pet­i­tive and get some stuff done here. You heard De­N­o­vo talk about their Zan­dolie plat­form and a lot of our projects go­ing for­ward are go­ing to be sub-sea,” Fitz­patrick added.

In 2018, bpTT award­ed a con­tract to TOF­CO to fab­ri­cate the jack­et for the Cas­sia C plat­form at La Brea and de­cid­ed to fab­ri­cate the top­side at the Al­tami­ra fab­ri­ca­tion yard, Mex­i­co.

The Jack­et which was fab­ri­cat­ed in Trinidad was long com­plet­ed and in­stalled but the top­side that was be­ing fab­ri­cat­ed in Mex­i­co has had sig­nif­i­cant de­lays and well-placed sources have told the BG that the in­stal­la­tion phase has re­vealed many tech­ni­cal is­sues with the fab­ri­ca­tion in Mex­i­co.

A jack­et refers, in oil and gas ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion, to the steel frame sup­port­ing the deck and the top­sides on a fixed off­shore plat­form.

Fitz­patrick said there was noth­ing bpTT could have done since the de­lays were caused by sig­nif­i­cant Covid-19 out­breaks that forced the shut­down of the fab­ri­ca­tion yard.

She ad­mit­ted that there are start-up is­sues but in­sist­ed that these are with­in the scope of nor­mal start-up chal­lenges.

“There’s al­ways is­sues once you come out of a yard and you start com­mis­sion­ing a project, that’s where you start to dis­cov­er things, so I would con­sid­er that with­in the nor­mal project.” bpTT’s re­gion­al pres­i­dent told the BG.

Ac­cord­ing to bpTTs web­site, Cas­sia C is a com­pres­sion project which will en­able BPTT to ac­cess and pro­duce low pres­sure gas re­serves from cur­rent­ly pro­duc­ing fields in the Greater Cas­sia Area, max­imis­ing re­cov­ery from these ex­ist­ing re­sources.

The plat­form will have a through­put ca­pac­i­ty of 1.2 bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of gas a day (bcfd). The project was sanc­tioned in 2018 and is ex­pect­ed to come on­line in 2021.

Asked whether bpTT would, in the fu­ture, con­sid­er re­turn­ing to La Brea to fab­ri­cate ma­jor project Fitz­patrick was not pre­pared to com­mit to it.

“We will con­sid­er, as we al­ways do, it is a com­pet­i­tive process and the Trinidad com­pa­nies can bid for what we need in terms of qual­i­ty, size, safe­ty, all the com­mer­cial stuff, as we have done be­fore. We built sev­en plat­forms in La Brea, the ac­tu­al top­side for Cas­sia would have been a prob­lem in La Brea this time,” bpTT’s re­gion­al pres­i­dent told the BG.

Re­cent­ly BPTT con­firmed the fur­ther project de­lay, say­ing COVID-19 was re­spon­si­ble for its in­abil­i­ty to de­liv­er the nat­ur­al gas on time.

BPTT told the Busi­ness Guardian: “The hook up and com­mis­sion­ing phase of the Cas­sia C project is con­tin­u­ing and first gas is ex­pect­ed in the sec­ond half of the year. The project was ini­tial­ly planned to come on­line in 2021 but de­liv­ery was pushed to 2022 due to the im­pact of COVID-19.”

The com­pa­ny’s fail­ure to de­liv­er on its Cas­sia C project and its failed in­fill drilling pro­gramme have sig­nif­i­cant­ly hurt the coun­try’s nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and gov­ern­ment rev­enue.

It has al­so neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed every­thing from LNG out­put to the gas avail­able to the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.

The lack of nat­ur­al gas from BPTT has al­so been the cause for the de­ci­sion to shut the Train 1 LNG plant as the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Ltd (NGC) wast­ed more than a quar­ter bil­lion dol­lars be­hind Train 1, hop­ing it would have ac­cess to more gas that was not forth­com­ing.

BPTT has al­so not been able to meet its con­tract­ed oblig­a­tions and has been short­ing both At­lantic LNG and the NGC of nat­ur­al gas.

How­ev­er un­der its con­tract­ed agree­ment NGC has no re­course for BPTT’s fail­ure to pro­vide it with con­tract­ed quan­ti­ties al­though the NGC was forced to pay out huge sums to down­stream com­pa­nies for its fail­ure to pro­vide them with all the con­tract­ed quan­ti­ties of nat­ur­al gas.

1) ↓Can BPTT say whether its Cas­sia project has been de­layed again to the end of the year?

2)↓ ↓If so what are the rea­sons for the de­lay?

3) ↓How long has been the de­lay from the orig­i­nal start up time­line to the lat­est es­ti­mat­ed start up date?

4) ↓How has this im­pact­ed BPTT’s abil­i­ty to de­liv­er gas to its cus­tomers?

5) ↓What is ex­pect­ed to be the sus­tained pro­duc­tion of Cas­sia when it gets go­ing?

BPTT said: “Cas­sia C will de­liv­er be­tween 200-300 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of gas a day (mm­scf/d) and pro­duc­tion will be put to­wards ful­fill­ing our ex­ist­ing con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions.”

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