Raphael John-Lall

Cen­tri­ca En­er­gy Up­stream's ex­pe­ri­ence in T&T over the last 18 months has been a suc­cess­ful one, says Er­ic Grif­fith, tech­ni­cal man­ag­er of up­stream busi­ness de­vel­op­ment. "Cen­tri­ca has built up a sol­id re­source base and has moved quick­ly to progress projects and pre-in­vest­ed to en­sure de­liv­ery in time­frames. We have worked proac­tive­ly with all stake­hold­ers, part­ners, peers and the pub­lic en­ti­ties to al­low de­liv­er­ies of syn­er­gies, ef­fi­cien­cies and ben­e­fits," he said. He was speak­ing two Tues­days ago at the En­er­gy Cham­ber's an­nu­al con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

Cen­tri­ca En­er­gy is part of the Unit­ed King­dom-based Cen­tri­ca, a lead­ing in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy com­pa­ny which has three oth­er ma­jor sub­sidiaries-Cen­tri­ca Stor­age, Di­rect En­er­gy and British Gas. In T&T, Cen­tri­ca En­er­gy is the op­er­a­tor for Blocks 1a, 1b, 22 and NC­MA-4 and has non-op­er­at­ed in­ter­ests in NC­MA-1 and Block 2ab. Cen­tri­ca En­er­gy, which opened its doors to the pub­lic in T&T in Au­gust 2010, is con­tin­u­ing to grow and de­vel­op its po­si­tion through es­tab­lish­ing vi­able gas off-take so­lu­tions, gain­ing prospec­tive acreage on of­fer and ex­plo­ration with­in ex­ist­ing acreage.

T&T's high qual­i­ty re­source pool

Grif­fith said Cen­tri­ca en­tered T&T as an op­er­a­tor when it com­plet­ed the pur­chase of Petro­Cana­da's T&T as­sets in Au­gust 2010. It has since suc­cess­ful­ly set up a lo­cal of­fice with tech­ni­cal, ac­count­ing and ad­min­is­tra­tion func­tions. Cen­tri­ca has al­so been award­ed the NC­MA-4 block in the shal­low wa­ter li­cens­ing round and suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the largest sin­gle 3D seis­mic sur­vey ever shot in T&T and one of the largest in the world in 2011, cov­er­ing NC­MA-4 and ad­join­ing blocks. Grif­fith said that as a non-op­er­a­tor, it par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ac­qui­si­tion of seis­mic and drilling of ex­plo­ration wells on Block 2ab. Grif­fith said since Cen­tri­ca's of­fice was set up in 2012, it has drawn on a "high qual­i­ty" re­source pool in T&T, with an ex­cel­lent ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion ex­pe­ri­ence base for new en­trants to draw up­on. "How­ev­er, it is a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket where at­tract­ing and re­tain­ing staff can be chal­leng­ing. Cen­tri­ca now has a lo­cal staff of over 20 peo­ple that cov­er sub­sur­face tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tions, ac­count­ing and ad­min­is­tra­tion that is sup­port­ed by a team in the UK. This is ex­pect­ed to grow in 2012 as prepa­ra­tion for and ex­e­cu­tion of drilling op­er­a­tions to meet ex­ist­ing pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract (PSC) com­mit­ments is con­duct­ed."

NC­MA Ma­rine Seis­mic Ac­qui­si­tion

Grif­fith spoke about the suc­cess­es of the NC­MA 2, 3 and 4 3D ma­rine seis­mic ac­qui­si­tion.

Cen­tri­ca man­aged ac­qui­si­tion op­er­a­tions over NC­MA-2, 3 and 4 con­tigu­ous area on be­half of Niko Re­sources. The project man­age­ment was then hand­ed over to Niko Re­sources for com­ple­tion of the non-con­tigu­ous area for their NC­MA-3 block. NC­MA-4 PSC was then signed on April 18, 2011-five months af­ter the award. Grif­fith said there were 264,000 man­hours with no loss time in­juries or spills. He al­so point­ed out that all three PSCs: NC­MA 2,3 and 4 have ben­e­fit­ed from the joint op­er­a­tion ap­proach. "There has been an ex­cel­lent work­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween project teams of both op­er­at­ing com­pa­nies. There has been ef­fi­cient res­o­lu­tion of po­ten­tial dis­putes. The in­ter­ests of both com­pa­nies have been con­sid­ered at all times and there has been good joint work­ing agree­ment al­low­ing fair cost ap­por­tion­ment," he said.

Cen­tri­ca In­ter­na­tion­al

Grif­fith spoke about Cen­tri­ca's glob­al ex­ploits. In No­vem­ber 2011, out of a deal with Nor­way's Sta­toil emerged a £13 bil­lion con­tract for ten years for the UK from 2015. Cen­tri­ca and Sta­toil ASA signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing to con­sid­er part­ner­ing on gas fo­cused ex­plo­ration op­por­tu­ni­ties in Nor­way and the UK. The com­pa­ny al­so ac­quired US$1.5 bil­lion of the pro­duc­ing and de­vel­op­ment as­sets in the Nor­we­gian North Sea. In Jan­u­ary 2012, Cen­tri­ca ac­quired Unit­ed States-based Cono­coPhillips' in­ter­est in Stat­fjord field for US$223 mil­lion. "Cen­tri­ca will con­tin­ue to look for fur­ther growth op­por­tu­ni­ties in Nor­way and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly," Grif­fith said.

Cen­tri­ca has many T&T projects planned for the next 18 months. These in­clude the deep­wa­ter li­cens­ing round 1H, the NC­MA-4 3D seis­mic pro­cess­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tion and prospect in­ven­to­ry de­vel­op­ment, ful­fill­ing NCWA-4 MWC with ex­plo­ration drilling, the com­ple­tion of Block 2 ab PSC ex­plo­ration Phase 1, and mov­ing in­to the de­fine stage for the ex­isit­ng gas dis­cov­er­ies.