Cana­da-based Bel­grave Oil and Gas Cor­po­ra­tion, a pri­vate pe­tro­le­um de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny, is among a num­ber of com­pa­nies will­ing to in­vest be­tween US$200 to US$300 mil­lion in T&T's en­er­gy sec­tor. These es­ti­mates were giv­en to the Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day via e-mail by John Bel­grave, pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Bel­grave Oil and Gas. "These in­vestors are pri­mar­i­ly oil and gas op­er­at­ing com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in Cana­da. Names can­not be giv­en at this time un­til terms of en­gage­ment have been es­tab­lished with Trinidad. "I es­ti­mate that the ini­tial for­ay in­to Trinidad would be in the US$200 mil­lion to US$300 mil­lion range. Un­der­stand that this op­por­tu­ni­ty has a very short shelf life as in­vest­ment cap­i­tal can­not re­main idle," said the Trinidad-born Bel­grave, a ge­ol­o­gist.

"The in­vest­ment would be cap­i­tal cou­pled with tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer at all lev­els of im­ple­men­ta­tion. In­vest­ment funds would be Cana­di­an in ori­gin and through Bel­grave Oil and Gas Cor­po­ra­tion," he said.

Bel­grave spoke con­fi­dent­ly of in­vestors be­ing in­ter­est­ed in T&T's en­er­gy mar­ket. "We have had dis­cus­sions with in­vest­ment cap­i­tal sources in Cana­da that have ex­pressed a strong in­ter­est in in­vest­ing in the up­stream oil and gas sec­tor in T&T. For your in­for­ma­tion, in North Amer­i­ca, cap­i­tal is de­ployed to in a mod­u­lar fash­ion (to min­imise in­ef­fi­cien­cy). Each mod­ule is de­signed to pro­vide in­cre­men­tal oil pro­duc­tion of 10,000 bar­rels per day," he said. Bel­grave par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Ge­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T's (GSTT) two-day con­fer­ence two Tues­days ago at Cara Suites, Clax­ton Bay.

He said En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan in­di­cat­ed at the con­fer­ence a "strong sense of ur­gency" about turn­ing around Trinidad's de­cline in oil pro­duc­tion. "We have had pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of En­er­gy and Petrotrin. I have not di­rect­ly spo­ken with the Trinidad En­er­gy Min­is­ter. Our in­ten­tion is to sub­mit a pro­pos­al as soon as pos­si­ble to Petrotrin for im­ple­ment­ing en­hanced oil re­cov­ery (EOR) on­shore. For this to be fea­si­ble for us, our in­vest­ment and re­turn would have to meet cer­tain thresh­olds. As I in­di­cat­ed to you, the usu­al start­ing point would be 10,000 bar­rels/day pro­duc­tion in­crease, with an op­tion for ex­pan­sion," Bel­grave said. As far as Bel­grave is con­cerned, T&T's ma­ture oil­fields are ripe for in­vest­ment.

"We be­lieve that there are sev­er­al op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­crease oil pro­duc­tion in Trinidad's ma­ture oil­fields, and, at the GSTT con­fer­ence, we pre­sent­ed some proven tech­nolo­gies that could be im­ple­ment­ed."

T&T hav­ing been in the oil busi­ness for a long time has much to of­fer, Bel­grave said. "Trinidad has a long his­to­ry of oil pro­duc­tion. The in­fra­struc­ture is ex­cel­lent and well suit­ed for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of EOR tech­nolo­gies. I start­ed my ca­reer in T&T back in 1980 with Trinidad Tesoro and have a fun­da­men­tal un­der­stand­ing of the hy­dro­car­bon ge­o­log­i­cal ar­chi­tec­ture. "There are proven high-im­pact tech­nolo­gies that are well suit­ed to re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing Petrotrin's ma­ture oil­fields in­creas­ing its oil pro­duc­tion," he said.

Bel­grave said his com­pa­ny and Petrotrin have signed a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment to in­ves­ti­gate op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­crease oil pro­duc­tion on­shore. "Our pri­ma­ry fo­cus is the ap­pli­ca­tion of high-im­pact im­proved/en­hanced oil re­cov­ery tech­nol­o­gy (IOR/EOR) to in­crease oil and gas pro­duc­tion, im­prove re­cov­ery and add re­serves.

"The com­pa­ny was in­cor­po­rat­ed in the province of Al­ber­ta, Cana­da in Ju­ly 2009. Its cor­po­rate head of­fice is lo­cat­ed in the Sun­life Plaza, down­town Cal­gary," he said. Re­it­er­at­ing what he said in his pre­sen­ta­tion at last week's GSTT con­fer­ence, Bel­grave said more oil and gas does not mean a larg­er op­er­a­tional or en­vi­ron­men­tal foot­print. "There are prof­itable green­house gas se­ques­tra­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties in both oil and gas reser­voirs. Flue gas in­jec­tion with steam has im­proved both down­hole steam qual­i­ty and oil steam ra­tio dur­ing cyclic steam stim­u­la­tion (CSS). En­hanced gas re­cov­ery from nat­ur­al gas reser­voirs has proven to be vi­able by flue gas in­jec­tion," he said. Bel­grave said re­cent field tri­als have shown that the ad­di­tion of small quan­ti­ties of light hy­dro­car­bons to in­ject­ed steam can im­prove oil re­cov­ery fac­tor by as much as 30 per cent in CSS. "Per bar­rel of oil re­cov­ered, this trans­lates in­to a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in cap­i­tal and op­er­at­ing costs, wa­ter and nat­ur­al gas us­age and the quan­ti­ty of C02 from steam gen­er­a­tion that goes in to the at­mos­phere," Bel­grave said.

Projects

On May 1, 2011, Bel­grave Oil and Gas Cor­po­ra­tion was con­tract­ed by Sta­toil Cana­da to de­vel­op air in­jec­tion EOR tech­nol­o­gy.

The com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly has sev­er­al tech­ni­cal ser­vice agree­ments in Cana­da and Colom­bia. In Colom­bia, the com­pa­ny is in the ad­vanced stages of im­ple­ment­ing and air in­jec­tion pi­lot in a heavy oil reser­voir 8,500 feet deep. This project is in­tend­ed to demon­strate the fea­si­bil­i­ty of ex­ploit­ing sev­en bil­lion bar­rels by this method. Bel­grave Oil and Gas al­so has a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing in Colom­bia, which gives it ac­cess to a team 70+ en­gi­neers, ge­ol­o­gists and geo­physi­cists.

• On Sep­tem­ber 13, 2010, the com­pa­ny signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with the Colom­bian com­pa­ny, Petro­labin Lt­da, to joint­ly ac­quire and ex­ploit hy­dro­car­bon as­sets in Colom­bia and South Amer­i­ca.

In Cana­da, the com­pa­ny re­cent­ly com­plet­ed the de­sign an al­ka­line-sur­fac­tant-poly­mer flood­ing, which will be im­ple­ment­ed in 2011. The com­pa­ny is al­so present­ly en­gaged to by two com­pa­nies to de­sign and ex­e­cute cyclic-steam stim­u­la­tion (CSS) and ex­pand­ing-sol­vent SAGD (ES-

SAGD) pi­lots.

Bel­grave Oil and Gas is to an­nounce this month that it has been en­gaged to de­vel­op air in­jec­tion in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty for a grow­ing con­sor­tium of some of the largest oil and gas com­pa­nies in Cana­da.

• On Feb­ru­ary 18, 2010, it signed a tech­ni­cal part­ner ser­vices and joint ven­ture agree­ment with Ter­rex En­er­gy Inc, a Cal­gary-based ju­nior oil com­pa­ny that spe­cialis­es in the ap­pli­ca­tion of proven EOR meth­ods to im­prove oil pro­duc­tion from ma­ture pools.

About the com­pa­ny:

Bel­grave Oil and Gas Cor­po­ra­tion's pri­ma­ry fo­cus is the ap­pli­ca­tion of high-im­pact im­proved/en­hanced oil re­cov­ery tech­nol­o­gy (IOR/EOR) to in­crease oil and gas pro­duc­tion, im­prove re­cov­ery and add re­serves. Con­ven­tion­al pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary re­cov­ery meth­ods will pro­duce on­ly about one-third of the oil dis­cov­ered. Un­der cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions tens of bil­lions of bar­rels of ad­di­tion­al oil could be re­cov­ered in North Amer­i­ca alone, with the suc­cess­ful ap­pli­ca­tion of ex­ist­ing EOR tech­nol­o­gy. Ap­pli­ca­tion of proven high-im­pact EOR meth­ods, how­ev­er, has been lim­it­ed for the most part be­cause of steep learn­ing curves in their de­sign, im­ple­men­ta­tion and op­er­a­tion.

For ex­am­ple, air in­jec­tion con­tin­ues to re­main es­o­teric and out-of-fa­vor de­spite the fact that it has been eco­nom­i­cal­ly suc­cess­ful over a broad­er range of reser­voir types than any oth­er EOR process. Its ef­fec­tive­ness is not con­strained by oil type, rock per­me­abil­i­ty, reser­voir depth, pres­sure, tem­per­a­ture or con­nate wa­ter salin­i­ty. Re­cov­ery fac­tors in the range 50 per cent to 90 per cent of the orig­i­nal oil-in-place have been achieved where reser­voir dip was sig­nif­i­cant and used to ad­van­tage. Prop­er­ly en­gi­neered, air in­jec­tion is ca­pa­ble of com­mer­cial­ly re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing de­plet­ed wa­tered-out light-oil and steam­flood­ed heavy oil pools.

To­day, im­ple­men­ta­tion of high-im­pact re­cov­ery tech­nolo­gies is crit­i­cal due to:

• in­creas­ing de­mand for oil

•dif­fi­cul­ties in find­ing new ma­jor de­posits

• press­ing re­quire­ments for low­er en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact and cap­i­tal con­ser­va­tion that will come from ex­tend­ing the pro­duc­ing lives of known ac­cu­mu­la­tions.

Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

About Dr John Bel­grave...

Dr John DM Bel­grave is a pe­tro­le­um/reser­voir en­gi­neer with 30 years' di­verse oil and gas ex­pe­ri­ence.

He has suc­cess­ful­ly cre­at­ed val­ue in a va­ri­ety of tech­ni­cal, project man­age­ment and man­age­r­i­al ca­pac­i­ties in Trinidad, Cana­da, Co­lum­bia, Brazil, Unit­ed States, Kaza­khstan and Libya, in­volv­ing con­ven­tion­al oil, heavy oil, bi­tu­men, and gas op­er­a­tions.

Bel­grave be­gan his ca­reer as a heavy oil pe­tro­le­um/reser­voir en­gi­neer in Trinidad work­ing on cold pro­duc­tion and steam in­jec­tion projects. Sub­se­quent­ly, Bel­grave joined BP Cana­da&ia­cute;s Oil Sands Tech­nol­o­gy De­vel­op­ment Group in Cal­gary, Al­ber­ta, where he was in­volved with the plan­ning and op­ti­mi­sa­tion of the Mar­guerite Lake cyclic steam and air in­jec­tion demon­stra­tion satel­lites. From 1989 to 1996, Bel­grave served as a tenured as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary, where he pub­lished sev­er­al nov­el pa­pers on air in­jec­tion tech­nol­o­gy. Bel­grave then worked in a va­ri­ety of ad­vi­so­ry and man­age­ment ca­pac­i­ties in Kaza­khstan, Libya and Cana­da.

In Kaza­khstan, Bel­grave was a di­rec­tor and vice-pres­i­dent pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer­ing for Na­tions En­er­gy Com­pa­ny. He de­signed the de­vel­op­ment plan and pre­pared the tech­ni­cal bid to the Kaza­khstan Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate in­vestors, which re­sult­ed in the suc­cess­ful ac­qui­si­tion of the Karazhan­bas­mu­nai Joint Stock Oil Com­pa­ny for US$55 mil­lion. This com­pa­ny was lat­er sold for US$2 bil­lion.

In Libya, Bel­grave was re­spon­si­ble for reser­voir man­age­ment and pro­duc­tion op­ti­mi­sa­tion of the largest oil field in Africa, Sarir, pro­duc­ing 200,000 bar­rels of oil per day.

In Cana­da, Bel­grave de­signed and ex­e­cut­ed a US$100+ mil­lion heavy oil cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme for Petro­vera Re­sources, which dou­bled pro­duc­tion in two years. At En­Cana, he was in­volved with the de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of air in­jec­tion as a fol­low-up process to steam-as­sist­ed grav­i­ty drainage (SAGD), and then led the suc­cess­ful de­vel­op­ment of an en­hanced ig­ni­tion tech­nique for En­Cana&ia­cute;s gas-cap air in­jec­tion process (En­CAID).

Bel­grave has a bach­e­lor of sci­ence in pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer­ing (1980) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, a doc­tor­ate of phi­los­o­phy in chem­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing (1987) and cer­tifi­cate of strate­gic man­age­ment (2004) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary, and a Mas­ter of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion from Lans­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty (2007).