The sig­nif­i­cant loss of rev­enue to the coun­try caused by the nat­ur­al gas short­age has raised the ques­tion of small and mar­gin­al fields and what is be­ing done to bring that gas on stream.

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Mark Lo­quan told the re­cent an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing of the En­er­gy Cham­ber that the NGC had hired an in­di­vid­ual and had mapped the small ac­cu­mu­la­tions and feel it’s now in a po­si­tion to lob­by the gov­ern­ment to try and bring them in­to pro­duc­tion.

Lo­quan said the NGC knows where the small ac­cu­mu­la­tions are lo­cat­ed and how close they are to ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

In a re­cent ar­ti­cle in the com­pa­ny’s news­pa­per he de­scribed mar­gin­al fields as those fields that may be con­sid­ered un­eco­nom­ic or just mar­gin­al­ly eco­nom­i­cal­ly pos­i­tive un­der cur­rent fis­cal terms.

The NGC’s Pres­i­dent said the com­pa­ny un­der­took a fea­si­bil­i­ty study of small pools and mar­gin­al fields which was com­plet­ed in the sec­ond quar­ter this year. This study was the first phase in the larg­er project of get­ting these fields brought in­to pro­duc­tion.

“Based on the team’s pre­lim­i­nary analy­sis, it was es­ti­mat­ed that some of these fields or small pools could be brought on stream as ear­ly as 2019/2020 if con­di­tions favour their de­vel­op­ment. That is, with time­ly in­vest­ment de­ci­sions and ap­provals, more thor­ough field eval­u­a­tion and prompt mo­bil­i­sa­tion, Trinidad and To­ba­go could start re­ceiv­ing gas from se­lect small pools and mar­gin­al fields in the near term.” Lo­quan writes.

Ac­cord­ing to Lo­quan the larg­er, multi­na­tion­al op­er­a­tors of­ten rel­e­gate small pools and mar­gin­al fields in their pri­or­i­ty list, be­cause the eco­nom­ics of de­vel­op­ing a field are as­sessed rel­a­tive to oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties that ex­ist in their in­ter­na­tion­al port­fo­lio.

If more gas can be ex­tract­ed at cheap­er or com­pa­ra­ble costs else­where and de­rive more val­ue, then in­vest­ment at­ten­tion will be so di­rect­ed.

He said de­spite these chal­lenges small pools and mar­gin­al fields in Trinidad’s off­shore re­gion lo­cat­ed off the south­east and east coast have greater prob­a­bil­i­ty of be­ing suc­cess­ful­ly de­vel­oped be­cause of their prox­im­i­ty to ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

“An op­er­a­tor wish­ing to mon­e­tise a small pool or mar­gin­al field could po­ten­tial­ly drill from plat­forms in near­by fields and ac­cess the sup­ply net­work with short pipeline tie-ins, in­cur­ring min­i­mal over­head costs.

“This would of course re­quire col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween in­fra­struc­ture own­ers and op­er­a­tors.

“In some in­stances, the in­fra­struc­ture own­ers may be larg­er pro­duc­ers fo­cused on big­ger projects, while the par­ties in­ter­est­ed in de­vel­op­ing the small pools or mar­gin­al fields may be small­er, in­de­pen­dent op­er­a­tors. Such part­ner­ships could oc­cur through di­rect ne­go­ti­a­tion or may need to be bro­kered by the ‘land­lord’—the MEEI—but they are vi­tal to the suc­cess­ful de­vel­op­ment of small­er fields,” the NGC’s Pres­i­dent ar­gued.

The is­sue of small and mar­gin­al fields have been raised for at least the last decade.

There have been con­cerns that some of the larg­er com­pa­nies, par­tic­u­lar­ly bpTT, are in pos­ses­sion of acreage that has small ac­cu­mu­la­tion of gas that is not at­trac­tive to large play­ers but can be prof­itable for small­er com­pa­nies.

BPTT has in the past dis­missed these al­le­ga­tions say­ing it has a pol­i­cy of no mol­e­cule should be left be­hind and that it is pre­pared to bring on small­er ac­cu­mu­la­tion and point to their joint ven­tures with EOG Re­sources as ex­am­ples of this.

En­er­gy Con­sul­tant Tony Paul has rub­bished the NGC’s ap­proach say­ing he is sure that the NGC has nei­ther the tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence nor the in­for­ma­tion to ac­cu­rate­ly map where all the small and mar­gin­al fields are and the ap­proach of seek­ing fis­cal in­cen­tives to make those fields work is the “lazy and easy” ap­proach.

For Paul there is an es­ti­mat­ed 50 tril­lion cu­bic feet in small and mar­gin­al gas in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wa­ters.

He said what is re­quired is an up­stream mas­ter gas plan that looks at the seis­mic; how much gas in the ground, the pres­sure of the gas, how it’s be­ing pro­duced and how we can max­imise the amount we take out of the ground.

Paul points out that the large com­pa­nies pro­duce gas un­til there is in­suf­fi­cient pres­sure to bring it to the sur­face.

But he said that is based on the pres­sure of the pipelines. In his view the re­al cost of de­vel­op­ing gas is in the drilling of the wells, the con­struc­tion of the plat­forms and the con­struc­tion of the pipelines.

The En­er­gy con­sul­tant ar­gues that what is need­ed is vary­ing lev­els of pipeline pres­sure so that when the high pres­sure gas is de­plet­ed then the low pres­sure pipelines can get more to the sur­face at min­i­mal ad­di­tion­al costs.

He blamed the Gov­ern­ment for not ap­ply­ing the law and al­low­ing com­pa­nies to hold on­to acreage that they ought to re­turn if they are not pre­pared to pro­duce them.

Like Lo­quan, Paul agrees that larg­er com­pa­nies are forced to push small­er pools to the back of the line for in­vest­ment due to them com­pet­ing for funds glob­al­ly but he said that is not in the coun­try’s in­ter­est.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has been suf­fer­ing from nat­ur­al gas cur­tail­ment since 2013 and it has al­so ham­pered the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to seek out ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ments down­stream nat­ur­al gas.