The fol­low­ing is an of­fi­cial re­lease from bpTT con­cern­ing the suc­cess­ful start up of its new ter­mi­nal at Ga­le­o­ta, an ex­pan­sion project which be­gan in 2016.

BpTT STARTS UP GA­LE­O­TA EX­PAN­SION PROJECT (GEP)

bp Trinidad and To­ba­go LLC (bpTT) is pleased to an­nounce the safe start-up of the Ga­le­o­ta ex­pan­sion project (GEP). The project has been un­der con­struc­tion since late 2016 and was start­ed up on 28 Sep­tem­ber 2020. Its com­ple­tion is a ma­jor mile­stone for bpTT.

The Ga­le­o­ta Ter­mi­nal is core to bpTT’s op­er­a­tions and is es­sen­tial to Trinidad and To­ba­go, as it process­es all hy­dro­car­bon liq­uids pro­duced from bpTT’s 15 off­shore fa­cil­i­ties as well as from oth­er up­stream pro­duc­ers. The Ga­le­o­ta ter­mi­nal be­gan op­er­a­tions in 1972 and GEP was nec­es­sary to main­tain the safe, re­li­able and com­pli­ant ter­mi­nal op­er­a­tions for the next 20+ years.

The new fa­cil­i­ty will re­store the Ter­mi­nal’s the ca­pac­i­ty to process 20,000 bar­rels per day (bpd) of con­den­sate. It will al­so make our op­er­a­tions safer, by sep­a­rat­ing the en­trained gas and pro­duced wa­ter more ef­fi­cient­ly, there­by re­duc­ing con­den­sate volatil­i­ty. It al­so pro­vides in­creased safe­ty for our per­son­nel as a new­ly con­struct­ed con­trol room will now move op­er­a­tors fur­ther away from the plant.

In ad­di­tion, the fa­cil­i­ty has the ca­pac­i­ty to ef­fi­cient­ly process 50,000bpd of pro­duced wa­ter and en­ables com­pli­ance with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wa­ter pol­lu­tion rules.

At its peak dur­ing con­struc­tion, GEP em­ployed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 900 peo­ple, 96% of whom were na­tion­als. Over the past four years, the project al­so brought sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit to the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty of Ma­yaro and its en­vi­rons, through part­ner­ships with lo­cal sup­pli­ers for the pro­vi­sion of var­i­ous ser­vices and con­tract labour.

GEP al­so in­vest­ed TT$3.5 mil­lion in­to the Ma­yaro com­mu­ni­ty, main­ly sup­port­ing ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes. These pro­vid­ed grants to stu­dents wish­ing to pur­sue Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE) and schol­ar­ships to those wish­ing to pur­sue ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion.

bpTT Pres­i­dent, Claire Fitz­patrick said:

“This is a proud mo­ment for bpTT—the cul­mi­na­tion of years of work and ef­fec­tive part­ner­ships be­tween our teams, our con­trac­tors and the many peo­ple from our com­mu­ni­ty who worked to­geth­er to safe­ly de­liv­er the project. Al­though this project does not di­rect­ly in­crease pro­duc­tion, it is an im­por­tant in­vest­ment in safe, re­li­able and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly com­pli­ant fa­cil­i­ties that will sup­port our con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions over the com­ing decades.”