GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The NGC has signed a Frame­work Agree­ment with Primera Oil and Gas Ltd-- a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration Inc (Touch­stone)--and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Her­itage) for the sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas from Touch­stone’s re­cent land dis­cov­ery.

In a me­dia re­lease the NGC said the gas dis­cov­ery was made in the Or­toire On­shore Block in two wells, Co­ho and Cas­cadu­ra.

“The Co­ho-1 well is a nat­ur­al gas dis­cov­ery, and ini­tial pro­duc­tion rates are ex­pect­ed to be 10-12 MM­scf/d.

“Work is pro­gress­ing to bring this well on stream in the third quar­ter of 2020,” the NGC not­ed.

Mean­while, it added that ini­tial flow­back test­ing on the Cas­cadu­ra-1ST1 well has con­firmed it is a sig­nif­i­cant liq­uids-rich gas dis­cov­ery. Ex­plo­ration work con­tin­ues with a fur­ther two prospects still to be drilled.

The Frame­work Agree­ment marks an im­por­tant step to­wards boost­ing T&T’s gas sup­ply to ex­ist­ing mar­kets, the NGC ex­plained.

The agree­ment is to de­vel­op plans and fos­ter a strate­gic part­ner­ship with re­spect to the de­vel­op­ment, sale and pur­chase of nat­ur­al gas and nat­ur­al gas liq­uids pro­duced from the Or­toire Block, on­shore South East Trinidad, the NGC said in a state­ment.

It added that in a broad­er con­text, this Agree­ment al­so rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment for the coun­try, as it sig­nals the first com­mer­cial gas pro­duc­tion from on­shore fields in near­ly two decades.

Com­ment­ing on the agree­ment, NGC’s Pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan said: “In the con­text of world events and the do­mes­tic gas sce­nario, this Agree­ment and the con­sid­er­able po­ten­tial of the un­der­ly­ing as­set are wel­come good news for our en­er­gy sec­tor.”

He added that cred­it must be giv­en to all teams, across all three par­ties, who have been dri­ving the ef­fort to ready this Agree­ment, even amidst pre­vail­ing chal­lenges.

Lo­quan said the NGC has been ag­gres­sive­ly pur­su­ing new sources of gas as part of its growth strat­e­gy, and this de­vel­op­ment adds an­oth­er mea­sure of sta­bil­i­ty to sup­ply from a promis­ing new prospect.

“We are now set to open a new chap­ter in the his­to­ry of on­shore nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion,” Lo­quan not­ed.

Paul Baay, CEO of Touch­stone, which is based in Cal­gary de­scribed the Frame­work Agree­ment as a very ex­cit­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty to part­ner with two promi­nent Trinidad or­gan­i­sa­tions to ful­ly de­vel­op ex­ist­ing and fu­ture nat­ur­al gas dis­cov­er­ies on its Or­toire ex­plo­ration prop­er­ty.

“NGC brings the vast un­der­stand­ing of gas in­fra­struc­ture to the project and Her­itage brings tech­ni­cal knowl­edge to sup­port the Touch­stone team,” Baay said.

He added that the Frame­work Agree­ment is a key step to a time­ly “max­imi­sa­tion of this world class as­set.”

CEO of Her­itage Ar­lene Chow added that the com­pa­ny is ex­cit­ed to have achieved this mile­stone with Touch­stone as op­er­a­tor since the last on­shore gas dis­cov­ery was in 2002, not too far away in the Cara­pal Ridge 1 well.

“The Co­ho, Cas­cadu­ra and oth­er de­vel­op­ments from the Or­toire Block are im­por­tant to our near and medi­um-term growth strat­e­gy in Trinidad and To­ba­go and to our com­mit­ment to help se­cure the coun­try’s en­er­gy fu­ture and the cre­ation of sus­tain­able jobs.

“In this re­gard, we val­ue the con­tin­ued strong re­la­tion­ship with our op­er­a­tor Touch­stone and NGC to achieve this strate­gic vi­sion,” Chow said.

With this Agree­ment now in place, the next steps will be con­clu­sion of de­tailed Gas Sup­ply Agree­ment Terms and the de­vel­op­ment of the Co­ho and Cas­cadu­ra fields.