En­er­gy Re­porter

En­er­gy con­sul­tants An­tho­ny Ram­lack­hans­ingh and Dr Kr­ish­na Per­sad ex­pect there will be more dis­cov­er­ies in the shal­low wa­ters off Trinidad, but said this will not change the nar­ra­tive that the large pools of nat­ur­al gas have al­ready been dis­cov­ered.

Their state­ments fol­low Mon­day's an­nounce­ment by the coun­try's largest nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­er bpTT that it had dis­cov­ered an ad­di­tion­al one tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf) of gas in its Savonette gas field, dou­bling the es­ti­mat­ed gas in place to 2tcf.

Per­sad said: "I ex­pect that on the con­ti­nen­tal shelf we will find a few more sur­pris­es like this, in the or­der of one tcf each, but it does not change the fact that the easy large near-shore fields have al­ready been dis­cov­ered."

Ram­lack­hans­ingh, who is al­so a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, agreed with Prsad and said he ex­pect­ed there will be some sim­i­lar dis­cov­er­ies be­cause bet­ter tech­nol­o­gy an im­proved seis­mic will as­sist bpTT and oth­er com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing on the con­ti­nen­tal shelf and, there­fore, in shal­low wa­ter to find more re­serves.

"This dis­cov­ery shows that there is some up­side po­ten­tial on the con­ti­nen­tal shelf. We will prob­a­bly find an­oth­er two or three tcf on this par­tic­u­lar trend. I think this dis­cov­ery was made on the north­west, south­east trend as­so­ci­at­ed with ma­jor counter re­gion­al fault that con­tin­ues south of the Savonette fault and we should en­counter two or three more sim­i­lar dis­cov­er­ies on this trend," Ram­lack­hans­ingh told the­Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view on Tues­day.

BPTT made the an­nounce­ment fol­low­ing the drilling of the Savonette 4 ap­praisal well, which was spud­ded in­to an untest­ed fault block east of the orig­i­nal Savonette field dis­cov­ery in the Colum­bus basin ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 kilo­me­tres off the south­east coast of Trinidad. The Savonette 4 ap­praisal well was drilled in wa­ter depths of al­most 300 feet.

BPTT said the well was drilled to a to­tal depth of 18,678 feet and pen­e­trat­ed hy­dro­car­bon-bear­ing reser­voirs in two in­ter­vals with dis­cov­ered gas in place ex­ceed­ing ini­tial es­ti­mates.

The Savonette field was dis­cov­ered in 2004 by the Chacha­la­ca ex­plo­ration well and be­gan pro­duc­tion in 2009 through a nor­mal­ly un­manned plat­form. The com­pa­ny said based on the suc­cess of the Savonette 4 well it is is propos­ing to drill a fur­ther two de­vel­op­ment wells in­to the Savonette reser­voirs.

The gas dis­cov­ered be­gan pro­duc­tion in Oc­to­ber 2012, with the Savonette 4 well cur­rent­ly flow­ing at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 225 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of gas a day (mm­scf/d), ramp­ing up to 250mm­scf/d. If suc­cess­ful, the two ad­di­tion­al de­vel­op­ment wells are al­so ex­pect­ed to be brought in­to pro­duc­tion over the next year to eigh­teen months.

BPTT has a 100 per cent work­ing in­ter­est in Savonette 4.

BPTT made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing a meet­ing in Lon­don be­tween Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, Kevin Ram­nar­ine; T&T's High Com­mis­sion­er to Lon­don, Garvin Nicholas; and BP rep­re­sen­ta­tives in­clud­ing Bob Fr­yar, ex­ec­u­tive Vice-pres­i­dent – pro­duc­tion; Bernard Looney, ex­ec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent – de­vel­op­ments; and Nor­man Christie, pres­i­dent, bpTT.

"This is ex­cit­ing news for both bpTT and the in­dus­try since this rep­re­sents the largest dis­cov­ery for bpTT since 2005," said Nor­man Christie.

Christie said: "The sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in the Savonette 4 well and the po­ten­tial fur­ther in­vest­ment in two ad­di­tion­al de­vel­op­ment wells, com­bined with the in­vest­ment in the ocean bot­tom ca­ble seis­mic ac­qui­si­tion, is tes­ta­ment to bpTT's on­go­ing com­mit­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of our T&T op­er­a­tions and the wider in­dus­try. This dis­cov­ery demon­strates that with the right tech­nol­o­gy we can con­tin­ue to un­cov­er the full po­ten­tial of the Colum­bus Basin."

Per­sad said the dis­cov­ery will al­so not deal with the chal­lenges that are be­ing faced by the down­stream in­dus­try which is fac­ing a short­age of gas. He said the bpTT dis­cov­ery will add to the re­serves po­si­tion but it will do lit­tle in deal­ing with the de­liv­ery of gas which has been cur­tailed due to com­pa­nies led by bpTT do­ing main­te­nance work and as a re­sult not be­ing able to de­liv­er enough gas to the down­stream in­dus­try.