Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration is ex­cit­ed to ramp up its pro­duc­tion now that the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has con­firmed the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment is com­plet­ed.

The Al­ber­ta-based com­pa­ny is al­so prepar­ing to launch T&T’s first on­shore nat­ur­al gas project in 20 years.

Last week, the EMA con­firmed that no fur­ther in­for­ma­tion was re­quired re­gard­ing the Cas­cadu­ra En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment (EIA).

The Cas­cadu­ra EIA sup­ports the com­pa­ny’s ap­pli­ca­tion for a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) to con­duct de­vel­op­ment op­er­a­tions with­in the Cas­cadu­ra area of the Or­toire block.

The EMA con­firmed the fol­low­ing des­ig­nat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties of the CEC have been deemed ap­plic­a­ble to the pro­posed Cas­cadu­ra project: ex­plo­ration for crude oil and nat­ur­al gas; es­tab­lish­ment of a fa­cil­i­ty for pri­ma­ry or sec­ondary pro­duc­tion of crude oil, con­den­sate or as­so­ci­at­ed gas; es­tab­lish­ment of a fa­cil­i­ty for nat­ur­al gas or con­den­sate pro­duc­tion; es­tab­lish­ment of in­fra­struc­ture for pipeline sys­tems; and es­tab­lish­ment of in­fra­struc­ture for stor­age of pe­tro­le­um or liq­uid pe­tro­le­um gas or their de­riv­a­tives.

These rep­re­sent all of the nec­es­sary ac­tiv­i­ties for com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion at Cas­cadu­ra pur­suant to Touch­stone’s ap­pli­ca­tion.

Touch­stone sub­mit­ted the re­main­ing EIA doc­u­men­ta­tion on Au­gust 3, 2022, and the EMA re­spond­ed on Au­gust 5, 2022 stat­ing that the sub­mit­ted in­for­ma­tion was re­viewed and was deemed ad­e­quate to de­ter­mine the out­come of the com­pa­ny’s CEC ap­pli­ca­tion.

Pur­suant to statu­to­ry CEC rules, the EMA con­firmed that a fi­nal CEC de­ter­mi­na­tion will be made by Sep­tem­ber 15, 2022.

Pres­i­dent and CEO of Touch­stone Paul Baay dur­ing a re­cent dis­cus­sion with “Di­rec­torsTalk In­ter­views”—a UK com­pa­ny—ex­plained what this sig­nals for the Cas­cadu­ra well, ef­fects on the pro­duc­tion time­line and the process of pre-com­mis­sion­ing and com­mis­sion­ing start­ing at Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration’s Co­ho fa­cil­i­ty and the view of T&T Gov­ern­ment on the im­mi­nent pro­duc­tion from the Or­toire block.

“This is re­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant for us. It is some­thing we have been wait­ing for a long time. It’s ba­si­cal­ly the en­vi­ron­men­tal per­mit for us to pro­ceed with the project. It’s been some­thing we have been work­ing for about a year.

“It’s a re­al­ly thor­ough project and what it will do for us is out­line the next five years of op­er­a­tions. Al­though it has been sort of painful to get us to this point, it al­low us to drill wells, it al­lows us to build our gas fa­cil­i­ty, it al­lows us to build roads and pipelines so now we can re­al­ly lay out a re­al­ly firm and clear plan for the next five years,” Baay out­lined, re­it­er­at­ing the process has been “very thor­ough and time con­sum­ing.”

On whether there are ex­pect­ed to be ef­fects on the pro­duc­tion time­line of Cas­cadu­ra be­cause of the de­lays, Baay re­mained hope­ful Touch­stone will achieve pro­duc­tion be­tween now and the end of the year, say­ing this will de­pend al­so on how quick­ly the com­pa­ny can move and al­so on the weath­er.

“It’s def­i­nite­ly been de­layed and we have been push­ing on two fronts. We have been con­tin­u­ing to fab­ri­cate var­i­ous things that we could with­out ac­tu­al­ly go­ing on the site. Every­thing is go­ing to push for­ward as fast as we can. The next cou­ple of weeks we will firm that time­line up. It may push things by a cou­ple of months but it’s not go­ing to push us in­to 2023,” Baay said.

Touch­stone al­so re­cent­ly an­nounced pre-com­mis­sion­ing and com­mis­sion­ing will be com­menc­ing at Co­ho.

“This will be the first on­shore gas in 20 years. It’s a big deal for us and al­so the coun­try,” Baay added.

What’s next for Co­ho?

Ac­cord­ing to Baay the fa­cil­i­ty is built for about 20 mil­lion cu­bic feet a day, not­ing the ini­tial well should be around eight to ten mil­lion cu­bic feet a day.

“So we will wind that out for a lit­tle while and we do have an ap­proval to drill a sec­ond well there and we will look to get back in there at some point,” Baay said.

He not­ed the com­pa­ny “re­al­ly wants” to ramp up pro­duc­tion at Cas­cud­u­ra, adding the new per­mit will en­able to drill up to eight more wells.

“I don’t think we will need that many to fill the fa­cil­i­ty. We will drill enough to fill that up and end up about 200 mil­lion a day in 2023 and then we will look at Co­ho af­ter that,” Baay said.

Baay was al­so asked how this Gov­ern­ment viewed the an­nounced pro­duc­tion from the Or­toire block.

Say­ing there has been a lot of sup­port Baay how­ev­er, added, “I think there has been a lot of con­cern. This EIA has tak­en much longer than cer­tain­ly we an­tic­i­pat­ed. I think a lot of peo­ple sort of ques­tioned the au­then­tic­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment but in fair­ness this is the first new gas brought on in 20 years and we are talk­ing about a fa­cil­i­ty that’s about 200 mil­lion cu­bic feet a day.

“We had to go through the process to make sure all the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion was done, the de­sign was cor­rect. But they (Gov­ern­ment) are re­al­ly ex­cit­ed to get this on and we are go­ing to do as quick as we can,” Baay ex­plained.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for job cre­ation as the ex­per­tise of lo­cal con­trac­tors will be used.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young met with Baay on Wednes­day at the Min­istry’s Head Of­fice where dis­cus­sions fo­cused on Touch­stone’s work pro­gramme and specif­i­cal­ly the Co­ho and Cas­cadu­ra wells.

The par­ties al­so spoke about po­ten­tial fu­ture ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion.

Co­ho and Cas­cadu­ra wells are con­ven­tion­al gas de­vel­op­ments lo­cat­ed on­shore T&T, both of which lie in block Or­toire.

A state­ment from the min­istry said Baay es­ti­mat­ed both blocks will flow both liq­uids and gas for many years.

Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration is an oil and nat­ur­al gas ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny ac­tive in T&T.

It is cur­rent­ly one of the largest in­de­pen­dent on­shore oil pro­duc­ers in Trinidad, with as­sets in sev­er­al large, high-qual­i­ty reser­voirs that have sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­nal­ly es­ti­mat­ed to­tal pe­tro­le­um ini­tial­ly-in-place and an ex­ten­sive in­ven­to­ry of oil and nat­ur­al gas de­vel­op­ment and ex­plo­ration op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration has achieved quar­ter­ly av­er­age crude oil pro­duc­tion vol­umes of 1,420 bar­rels per day rep­re­sent­ing a two per cent in­crease rel­a­tive to the pre­ced­ing quar­ter and a one per­cent in­crease from the 1,402 bbls/d pro­duced in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2021.

This was among the achieve­ments out­lined in the com­pa­ny’s op­er­at­ing and fi­nan­cial re­sults for the three and six months end­ed June 30, 2022.

Touch­stone achieved re­alised pe­tro­le­um sales of $12,596,000 from an av­er­age crude oil price of $97.48 per bar­rel com­pared to pe­tro­le­um sales of $7,586,000 from an av­er­age re­al­ized price of $59.06 per bar­rel in the com­par­a­tive quar­ter of 2021.

It al­so gen­er­at­ed an op­er­at­ing net­back of $44.99 per bar­rel, a 19 per cent in­crease from the first quar­ter of 2022 and a 71 per cent in­crease from the $26.30 per bar­rel re­port­ed in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2021.