An­tho­ny Wil­son

BP Trinidad & To­ba­go (bpTT) yes­ter­day an­nounced it had dis­cov­ered an es­ti­mat­ed one tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf) of gas off­shore Trinidad, dou­bling the es­ti­mat­ed gas in place in the Savonette gas field to two tril­lion cu­bic feet. BPTT made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing a meet­ing in Lon­don by Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Kevin Ram­nar­ine and T&T's High Com­mis­sion­er to Lon­don, Garvin Nicholas, with BP rep­re­sen­ta­tives in­clud­ing Bob Fr­yar, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of pro­duc­tion; Bernard Looney, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent, de­vel­op­ments and Nor­man Christie, pres­i­dent, bpTT.

The Savonette 4 ap­praisal well was drilled in­to an untest­ed fault block east of the orig­i­nal Savonette Field dis­cov­ery well, in wa­ter depths of al­most 300 feet in the Colum­bus Basin ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 kilo­me­tres off the south east coast of Trinidad. 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 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 18 months. Christie said: "This is ex­cit­ing news for both bpTT and the in­dus­try since this rep­re­sents the largest dis­cov­ery for bpTT since 2005. "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 Trinidad and To­ba­go 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."

BP has a 100 per cent work­ing in­ter­est in Savonette 4, which was dis­cov­ered in 2004 by the Chacha­la­ca ex­plo­ration well and be­gan pro­duc­tion in 2009 through a nor­mal­ly un­manned plat­form built in Trinidad at TOF­CO. Based on the suc­cess of the Savonette 4 well, bpTT is propos­ing to drill two more de­vel­op­ment wells in the Savonette reser­voirs. Speak­ing from Lon­don by tele­phone, Ram­nar­ine said the gas dis­cov­ery was good news for T&T. "First­ly, it demon­strates that we are ar­rest­ing the de­cline and bring­ing re­serves in­to pro­duc­tion. "Sec­ond­ly, it demon­strates that the Colum­bus Chan­nel con­tin­ues to be world class gas province.

It al­so in­di­cates that BP is com­mit­ted to T&T and would re­main com­mit­ted to T&T for the long haul. And it al­so places new light on at­tract­ing new play­ers to the down­stream sec­tor." The Savonette dis­cov­ery is sim­i­lar in size to bpTT's Sep­tem­ber 2002 Iron Horse dis­cov­ery, which was es­ti­mat­ed at the time to be one tril­lion cu­bic feet, and to the May 2001 Cashima dis­cov­ery, which was al­so rat­ed at one tcf.