French out­fit Peren­co be­lieves it can sus­tain­ably in­crease oil and gas pro­duc­tion in its 50-year-old Teak Samaan Poui (TSP) as­set off T&T’s East coast, and al­ready has the pro­duc­tion hold­ing at 10,000 bar­rels of oil per day.

In re­sponse to sev­er­al ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, the com­pa­ny said the in­stal­la­tion of its float­ing Macar­ius Pow­er Unit is a key mile­stone in the full mod­erni­sa­tion plan for the TSP as­set which in­volves the use of elec­tri­cal en­er­gy to lift oil, there­by re­duc­ing the nat­ur­al de­cline.

“Peren­co is al­so in­vest­ing in ad­di­tion­al projects which will sus­tain­ably in­crease oil and gas pro­duc­tion as part of its mod­erni­sa­tion plan which will in­clude up­grades to the field’s sur­face and sub-sur­face in­fra­struc­ture. It is crit­i­cal that we sta­bilise the pro­duc­tion and then seek to in­crease it; it would be dif­fi­cult to say ex­act­ly what the fu­ture av­er­age pro­duc­tion would be at this time but Peren­co has a long-term plan for TSP and for T&T,” the com­pa­ny not­ed.

It added, “Oil pro­duc­tion from the Teak, Samaan and Poui (TSP) fields is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 bopd over the last sev­er­al months and 20 mm­scfd of as­so­ci­at­ed nat­ur­al gas. TSP is a ma­ture off­shore pro­duc­tion as­set with 50 years of op­er­a­tion which re­quires con­tin­u­ous in­vest­ment and in­no­va­tion, and pro­duc­tive projects to main­tain its hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­tion; oth­er­wise it will de­cline.”

This is good news for the gov­ern­ment and the coun­try as the age­ing as­set is pro­ject­ed to not on­ly con­tin­ue pro­duc­ing but in­crease oil out­put, while at the same time free up nat­ur­al gas for sale to the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.

Last Thurs­day, the com­pa­ny launched its Macar­ius Pow­er Plat­form which is the first plat­form to be in­stalled in the TSP field since the 1980s.

It was in 2021 that Peren­co and its part­ners, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and NGC, launched a three-year US$200 mil­lion in­vest­ment pro­gramme to mod­ernise the TSP’s fields, re­plac­ing the ex­ist­ing gas-lift in­fra­struc­ture and op­er­a­tions with elec­tric sub­mersible pumps and elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of all TSP plat­forms.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny the first phase of this ini­tia­tive has al­ready in­creased pro­duc­tion by 25 per cent. The next phase of the in­vest­ment plan in­cludes the in­stal­la­tion of the Macar­ius Pow­er, con­ver­sion of gas lift sys­tems to ESP, pro­duced wa­ter rein­jec­tion pro­grams and well re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

The Macar­ius Pow­er, which was pre­vi­ous­ly a drilling rig, was re­cy­cled and con­vert­ed at Cari­doc, ful­ly util­is­ing the lo­cal work­force. The in­stal­la­tion of the Macar­ius Pow­er, with two gas tur­bines on board is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide re­li­able and clean elec­tri­cal pow­er to the TSP plat­forms, re­duc­ing the over­all car­bon foot­print of TSP op­er­a­tions by 30 per cent over the next three years. As this project de­vel­ops, Peren­co said the plan is to ful­ly elec­tri­fy the re­main­ing plat­forms and move to a cen­tralised low emis­sion gas-fired pow­er gen­er­a­tion sys­tem.

Ac­cord­ing to Peren­co, the use of nat­ur­al gas to lift oil from the reser­voir as an ar­ti­fi­cial lift method in TSP has reached its tech­ni­cal lim­it due to lift ef­fi­cien­cy cou­pled with ob­so­lete com­pres­sion equip­ment.

It not­ed that com­pres­sors are cost­ly to re­pair and with gas-lift there is a lim­it to well pro­duc­tion and by ex­ten­sion the re­cov­er­able re­serves of TSP.

“Elec­tri­cal Sub­mersible Pump (ESP) screen­ing show the great­est im­pact for the main­te­nance of pro­duc­tion and sub­se­quent in­crease. On the oth­er hand, we will not need to com­press and re-cy­cle 70 mm­scfd of nat­ur­al gas which would have been used in the pre­vi­ous­ly used gas-lift process,” Peren­co told the Busi­ness Guardian.

The French out­fit said the in­crease in oil pro­duc­tion comes from the in­stal­la­tion of these elec­tri­cal sub­mersible pumps (ES­Ps) to re­place the gas-lift tech­nol­o­gy of the 1970s need­ed to bring the oil to sur­face. With the in­stal­la­tion of each well ESP there will be a re­duc­tion in the vol­ume of gas for ar­ti­fi­cial lift, so this gas can be trans­ferred to the na­tion­al net­work op­er­at­ed by NGC.

It said TSP is over 50 years in pro­duc­tion and re­quires con­tin­u­ous in­vest­ment to main­tain pro­duc­tion and up­grade its top-side struc­tures to ex­tend the pro­duc­tive life of the as­set.

“This Pow­er Gen­er­a­tion project con­sists of ful­ly elec­tri­fy­ing the fields which will sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the car­bon foot­print of TSP by re­plac­ing old in­ef­fi­cient diesel en­gines (in­her­it­ed from the past) with mod­ern gas tur­bines to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty and by shut­ting-in in­ef­fi­cient gas-lift com­pres­sors. TSP gas reser­voirs are par­tic­u­lar­ly ma­ture with reser­voir de­ple­tion and wa­ter in­flux mak­ing all pre­dic­tions very chal­leng­ing. We have so far freed up to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7 mm­scfd of gas vol­umes. How­ev­er, this num­ber can range from 5 mm­scfd up to 20 mm­scfd based on sub­sur­face pro­jec­tion,” Peren­co told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Peren­co re­mind­ed that the in­stal­la­tion of the Macar­ius Pow­er is a key mile­stone in the full mod­erni­sa­tion plan for the TSP as­set to use elec­tri­cal en­er­gy to lift oil there­by re­duc­ing the nat­ur­al de­cline.

Peren­co said it is al­so in­vest­ing in ad­di­tion­al projects which will sus­tain­ably in­crease oil and gas pro­duc­tion as part of its mod­erni­sa­tion plan which will in­clude up­grades to the field’s sur­face and sub-sur­face in­fra­struc­ture.

Peren­co not­ed that it is crit­i­cal that it sta­bilise the pro­duc­tion and then seek to in­crease it and added that it would be dif­fi­cult to say ex­act­ly what the fu­ture av­er­age pro­duc­tion would be at this time but it has a long-term plan for TSP and for T&T.

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