Wood­side En­er­gy is com­mit­ted to T&T, coun­try man­ag­er Juan Vazquez has said.

And that com­mit­ment is not just about de­vel­op­ing T&T’s oil and gas, but its peo­ple, Vazquez said.

“We are com­mit­ted to our op­er­a­tions here, op­er­at­ing safe­ly, re­li­ably, and de­vel­op­ing peo­ple,” Vazquez told the Busi­ness Guardian dur­ing a sit-down in­ter­view at the T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence held at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain last week.

On June 1 last year, BHP’s Pe­tro­le­um busi­ness was merged with Wood­side cre­at­ing a glob­al top 10 in­de­pen­dent en­er­gy com­pa­ny by pro­duc­tion.

This glob­al US mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar merg­er had a di­rect im­pact on T&T.

The build­ing lo­cat­ed at In­vaders Bay Tow­er, In­vaders Bay, Off Au­drey Jef­fers High­way, Port-of- Spain which once housed BHP now has Wood­side print­ed in white on it.

“We have been here for 20-odd years and with An­gos­tu­ra be­ing our an­chor and our vi­sion we are com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing to op­er­ate and pro­duce the oil and gas the An­gos­tu­ra as­set has,” Vazquez said.

The Greater An­gos­tu­ra field is an off­shore con­ven­tion­al oil and gas field lo­cat­ed 38km north­east of Trinidad.

The An­gos­tu­ra field was dis­cov­ered in 1999, with first oil achieved in Jan­u­ary 2005 (Phase 1).

Phase 2 es­tab­lished gas sales in 2011. First gas for An­gos­tu­ra Phase 3 was es­tab­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2016. Ru­by is a con­ven­tion­al off­shore oil and gas field lo­cat­ed with­in the Greater An­gos­tu­ra Fields. First oil was achieved in May 2021.

The cur­rent de­vel­op­ment com­pris­es a main cen­tral pro­cess­ing plat­form (CPP), gas ex­port plat­form (GEP), four well­head pro­tec­tor plat­forms (WPP) and on­shore ter­mi­nal. Flow­lines con­nect the Ru­by well­head plat­form back to the CPP and GEP for pro­cess­ing.

Crude oil from CPP is trans­port­ed to the Ter­mi­nal Fa­cil­i­ty lo­cat­ed in the south east­ern end of Trinidad.

Wood­side is the op­er­a­tor with a 45 per cent stake in the An­gos­tu­ra (Block 2(c)) and 68.46 per cent in Ru­by (Block 3(a)).

Vazquez apart from An­gos­tu­ra Wood­side is fo­cus­ing on de­vel­op­ing Ca­lyp­so.

“We have the Ca­lyp­so dis­cov­ery which has good po­ten­tial and we un­der­stand that it is a strate­gic re­source for the coun­try as well as for us,” he said.

Vazquez said the vi­sion is “How can we make Ca­lyp­so the best it can be so we can un­lock the deep wa­ter basin in T&T which is some­thing that looks very in­ter­est­ing.”

Ca­lyp­so is a deep­wa­ter gas dis­cov­ery in T&T.

The Ca­lyp­so op­por­tu­ni­ty is lo­cat­ed 217km off the coast of T&T, close to ex­ist­ing LNG in­fra­struc­ture and down­stream petro­chem­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties.

The Ca­lyp­so ap­praisal drilling pro­gram (con­sist­ing of the Bon­gos-3, Bon­gos-3X and Bon­gos-4 wells) con­clud­ed on 20 De­cem­ber 2021. All wells en­coun­tered hy­dro­car­bons.

Ca­lyp­so sits with­in the Deep­wa­ter Blocks 23(a) and TTDAA 14 lease blocks.

Wood­side is the op­er­a­tor of Ca­lyp­so with a 70 per cent stake.

While Ca­lyp­so is cur­rent­ly be­ing ap­praised it is es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf).

Last year an off­shore tech­nol­o­gy web­site re­port­ed that pro­duc­tion from Ca­lyp­so is ex­pect­ed to be­gin in 2028 and is fore­cast to peak in 2032.

The field is ex­pect­ed to reach its eco­nom­ic lim­it in 2071.

“We are com­mit­ted to the op­er­a­tions we have now in An­gos­tu­ra and bring­ing to sur­face the oil and gas the coun­try needs safe­ly and we have de­liv­ered to­day a very strong safe­ty record and pro­duc­tion record so we are very com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing to do that,” Vazquez said.

“We are very hap­py with the hu­man re­source that we have in the coun­try and we are work­ing very dili­gent­ly to make Ca­lyp­so a vi­able de­vel­op­ment and that is some­thing that is very im­por­tant to us,” he said.

Vazquez said bal­anc­ing the clean en­er­gy tran­si­tion is one of the things Wood­side will be look­ing at.

“The way we are look­ing at the strat­e­gy of low car­bon, re­li­able, af­ford­able en­er­gy goes in sync with our cli­mate strat­e­gy which is two-fold,” he said.

“We have one piece which is low­er­ing and de­car­bon­is­ing our own op­er­a­tions which are scope 1 and scope 2 emis­sions.

“The oth­er bid is around scope 3 emis­sions which is the emis­sions of our cus­tomers,” he said.

As such he said Wood­side has com­mit­ted to in­vest­ing US$5 bil­lion around the world on prod­ucts and ser­vices that make our cus­tomers de­car­bonised.

Vazquez said Wood­side is a com­pa­ny that is “look­ing to be nim­ble and move fast and adapt.”

“I like our com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy be­cause it is very clear about bal­anc­ing the low car­bon with the af­ford­abil­i­ty and the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of what we pro­duce,” he said.

“We are bi­ased to­ward gas. We think gas is go­ing to be a big part of the mix,” Vazquez said.

Vazquez came to T&T fol­low­ing the merg­er.

But this is not his first stint on our shores.

“My ca­reer with BHP start­ed here in T&T. It’s a re­turn home. I was born and raised in Venezuela so I am from across the street,” Vazquez said.

“It has been great so far I got here mid-year last year and it has been very ex­cit­ing we have a lot of things go­ing on,” he said.

Vazquez said his goal is to con­tin­ue the work that has been done so far.

“The first part of the lega­cy is to ho­n­our what we have done so far so con­tin­ue to up­hold the work of hun­dreds of our col­leagues that have been work­ing at An­gos­tu­ra since 2005-2006,” Vazquez said.

“The sec­ond one is to do the best I can to pro­vide both the com­pa­ny and the coun­try with growth op­tions that we can part­ner with so the best I can to put those op­tions on the ta­ble so both com­pa­ny and gov­ern­ment can make de­ci­sions to pur­sue them,” he said.

Vazquez said he hopes to de­vel­op this coun­try’s tal­ent.

“I think we have an in­cred­i­ble team. I want to say we have at least 20 T&T na­tion­als that are all around the cir­cuit. I want to con­tin­ue to build that tal­ent and find the re­place­ments, the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers,” he said.

Vazquez laud­ed Wood­side’s Sur­face En­gi­neer­ing Man­ag­er Ter­rence Dood­nath who was fea­tured at the T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence.