T&T on Mon­day took the first step to­wards re­dress­ing the con­tin­ued de­cline in its proven nat­ur­al gas re­serves as it be­gan the shoot­ing of 3D seis­mic in the blocks re­cent­ly award­ed in the shal­low wa­ter bid round. The Ry­der Scott sur­veyed showed that the coun­try's proven nat­ur­al gas re­serves had de­clined from 14.416 tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf) in 2009 to 13.460 tcf at the end of 2010. How­ev­er, the prob­a­ble and pos­si­ble re­serves have re­mained fair­ly sta­ble at 7.642 tcf and 5.995 tcf while T&T's ex­plo­ration po­ten­tial re­mained at 26 tcf. Ry­der Scott's se­nior pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer, Lar­ry McHalf­fey, blamed the re­duc­tion in proven re­serves on the lack of re­place­ment through ad­di­tion­al drilling by the com­pa­nies.

He said the time will come when the op­er­a­tors will re­alise that they need more proven re­serves to ful­fil their con­tract­ed oblig­a­tions. He said he ex­pect­ed, at that time, there will be move­ment of re­serves from the pos­si­ble and prob­a­ble columns to proven. Mean­while, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine ar­gued that while there was no ex­plo­ration drilling for gas in 2010, he ex­pect­ed by the mid­dle of next year, ex­plo­ration wells will be drilled in blocks NC­MA(2), NC­MA(4), NC­MA(3) and 4(b). "It should be not­ed that the au­dit did not take these blocks in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, how­ev­er, tech­ni­cal work un­der­tak­en by the min­istry in­di­cates that the blocks may con­tain in ex­cess of 5 tcf of gas and the min­istry's es­ti­mates are con­ser­v­a­tive com­pared to those of the com­pa­nies award­ed the blocks," Ram­nar­ine said.

Cen­tri­ca En­er­gy was award­ed a pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract (PSC) by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs (MEEA) to ex­plore, de­vel­op and pro­duce hy­dro­car­bons from off­shore block NC­MA 4. Niko Re­sources were al­so award­ed PSCs for off­shore blocks NC­MA-2 and NC­MA-3 in the same

bid round. The com­pa­nies have de­cid­ed to joint­ly con­duct the seis­mic sur­vey in an ef­fort to re­duce costs and to re­duce the length of time it would take to have the sur­veys done. Cen­tri­ca's coun­try man­ag­er, Kao Ja­cobs, said un­der the PSC, his com­pa­ny will ac­quire a min­i­mum of 1,500 square kilo­me­tres of 3D ma­rine geo­phys­i­cal da­ta to be ac­quired on the blocks and that the joint sur­vey is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by Jan­u­ary 2012. NC­MA 4 has wa­ter depths vary­ing be­tween 50 me­tres and 180 me­tres.

He said: "A seis­mic sur­vey is a geo­phys­i­cal sur­vey that pro­duces an im­age of the sub-sur­face that can be in­ter­pret­ed in or­der to de­ter­mine the like­ly pres­ence of hy­dro­car­bons. On­ly drilling a well can con­firm the pres­ence of hy­dro­car­bons. The in­for­ma­tion ob­tained form the seis­mic sur­vey will used by our sub-sur­face team to de­ter­mine the best lo­ca­tion and quan­ti­ties of wells to be drilled.

"As such, it is too soon to tell how many wells are ex­pect­ed to be drilled as per the work pro­gramme. The NC­MA-4 pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract re­quires us to drill at least well with­in the first ex­plo­ration phase." The well in NC­MA 4 is ex­pect­ed to be drilled by the first quar­ter of 2013. Ja­cobs said based on ex­ist­ing da­ta and the fact that NC­MA-4 al­ready has two gas fields (Iris and Or­chid) on the block, Cen­tri­ca En­er­gy hopes and ex­pects to be able to add ad­di­tion­al gas re­sources to its port­fo­lio. The com­pa­ny al­ready has more than one tcf of gas in its port­fo­lio which has been tech­ni­cal­ly strand­ed be­cause of its prox­im­i­ty to ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture and a lack of mar­ket for the gas. He said: "We are look­ing at the op­tions to open up new mar­kets for T&T nat­ur­al gas and are at the very ear­ly stages of eval­u­at­ing a num­ber of ex­port op­tions, in­clud­ing com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG) and mid-size liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (ML­NG). The seis­mic is be­ing shot by the Po­lar­cus Naila-an ul­tra-mod­ern 12 stream­er 3D/4D seis­mic ves­sel-will cost US$40 mil­lion, in­clu­sive of fish­er­men com­pen­sa­tion.