Cur­tis Williams

Lead Ed­i­tor Busi­ness

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

* Com­pa­ny plans to drill 10 wells on land by end of year

* Joint Ven­ture part­ner ex­plor­ing for ad­di­tion­al re­serves

* Wants to bring on more oil in midst of high prices

With crude oil prices av­er­ag­ing more that US$100 a bar­rel, state-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um is try­ing to in­crease pro­duc­tion and now has two rigs drilling on land while it has an­oth­er 10 to 12 workover rigs run­ning to try and main­tain its base pro­duc­tion.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from the Busi­ness Guardian, the com­pa­ny ex­plained that the plan is to drill ten wells be­fore the end of the year and it had al­ready com­plet­ed five, cre­at­ed 700-plus tem­po­rary jobs and many of those jobs in its fence­line com­mu­ni­ties.

“On land, we have been ramp­ing up ac­tiv­i­ty. Two drilling rigs are now ex­e­cut­ing our Land For­ward drilling pro­gramme (FDP) with 10 de­vel­op­ment wells be­ing drilled this fis­cal year: five al­ready com­plet­ed and are be­ing put on pro­duc­tion and six and sev­en near com­ple­tion,” Her­itage ex­plained.

This drilling pro­gramme is fo­cused pri­mar­i­ly in its Pa­lo Seco, For­est Re­serve and Point Fortin Cen­tral fields.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny, it con­tin­ues to build on its suc­cess, work­ing to in­crease pro­duc­tion while keep­ing safe­ty at the core of its op­er­a­tions.

It said, “This is key as Her­itage’s pro­duc­tion is 60 per cent of T&T oil pro­duc­tion. As the rip­ple ef­fect of the Rus­sia-Ukraine war is felt across the world and com­mod­i­ty prices con­tin­ue to rise, we are tak­ing stock and re­vis­ing our strat­e­gy to lever­age op­por­tu­ni­ties that sup­port pro­duc­tion growth.”

Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have point­ed to Her­itage and be­fore it Petrotrin as cru­cial to T&T’s in­creased oil pro­duc­tion be­cause the com­pa­ny has most of the land acreage.

It al­so has sig­nif­i­cant hold­ings off­shore the South West of the is­land in the Gulf of Paria.

On­ly re­cent­ly En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young told a con­fer­ence of the Ge­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T, “At this junc­ture, the po­ten­tial for fu­ture oil pro­duc­tion, lies with state-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd, which is the coun­try’s largest oil pro­duc­er and the largest hold­er of on­shore acreage. The com­pa­ny has ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion rights on­shore, pri­mar­i­ly lo­cat­ed in the South­ern Basin, and in its off­shore acreage in the West Coast Ma­rine Area.”

The com­pa­ny how­ev­er has sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges in­clud­ing op­er­at­ing in ma­ture fields, most decades old and while it knows it is in ar­eas that has pro­duced and can con­tin­ue to pro­duce oil, get­ting it out of the ground and main­tain­ing pro­duc­tion re­quire con­stant in­vest­ment.

The com­pa­ny not­ed that 11 to 12 workover rigs are in op­er­a­tion con­tin­u­ous­ly in the land busi­ness unit, to en­sure it main­tains base pro­duc­tion by run­ning well ser­vic­ing jobs, while grow­ing pro­duc­tion with 20 heavy workovers card­ed for fis­cal 2022.

“Six Swab wells are al­so work­ing in the fields do­ing over 40 jobs per day. In the off­shore Sol­da­do fields, one workover rig is cur­rent­ly in op­er­a­tion with a plan to com­plete 15 heavy workovers this year,” boast­ed Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um.

Ac­cord­ing to Her­itage the for­ward drilling pro­gramme will ex­tend to its off­shore acreage with wells in is East Sol­da­do field.

“A ro­bust FDP for off­shore has been com­plet­ed with a plan to drilling the first two de­vel­op­ment wells in East Sol­da­do fields start­ing in Au­gust 2022,” the com­pa­ny re­vealed.

It not­ed that the rig is at present drilling an ex­plo­ration well for its joint ven­ture part­ner EOG re­sources.

“The rig that is now drilling the ex­plo­ration well CP1 in our joint ven­ture part­ner­ship with EOG in South­west Sol­da­do will be moved to the spud the lo­ca­tions in East Sol­da­do in the Her­itage acreage af­ter com­ple­tion of the CP1 well,” Her­itage not­ed.

Young al­so al­lud­ed to the ex­plo­ration well which he hoped would be suc­cess­ful.

“As re­gards its off­shore acreage, Her­itage signed a far­mout agree­ment and joint op­er­at­ing agree­ment with EOG Re­sources Ltd for ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment of its East Field in its Trinidad North­ern Area.

“The farm-in area com­pris­es of 14,870 hectares over the wider Trinidad North­ern Area E&P Li­cence area com­pris­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 97,000 hectares. EOG has 65% in­ter­est in the ven­ture and is the op­er­a­tor. The first ex­plo­ration well was spud on June 10, and drilling is pro­ject­ed to be com­plet­ed in 30 days. We are look­ing for­ward to good re­sults and in­creased oil pro­duc­tion from this ven­ture,” the En­er­gy Min­is­ter told the GSTT con­fer­ence.

Ac­cord­ing to Young, Her­itage has been fo­cus­ing on se­cur­ing a joint ven­ture part­ner for its North West Dis­trict which is lo­cat­ed with­in the west­ern seg­ment of the South­ern Basin ge­o­log­ic province.

The North West Dis­trict he not­ed is cov­ered by 3D seis­mic sur­vey cov­er­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 287 sq km, which is cur­rent­ly be­ing re­processed. In the in­ter­im, the process for en­gag­ing a joint-ven­ture part­ner has been de­ferred pend­ing the com­ple­tion of the re­pro­cess­ing ex­er­cise.

“Her­itage al­so in­vit­ed pro­pos­als for the joint de­vel­op­ment of its Ju­bilee field in the Sol­da­do Block off Trinidad West Coast Ma­rine Area. Fol­low­ing an ex­ten­sive and glob­al­ly fo­cused EOI and RFP process, Her­itage has en­tered in ne­go­ti­a­tions with the pre­ferred bid­der on a joint ven­ture arrange­ment to de­vel­op the Ju­bilee area, in­clud­ing the re­de­vel­op­ment of the ex­ist­ing brown­field acreage,” the min­is­ter said.

Ac­cord­ing to Young he has man­dat­ed Her­itage and the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries to work with lease out, farm out and work over com­pa­nies to in­crease oil pro­duc­tions and he is pre­pared to take hard and dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions, in­clud­ing, re­lin­quish­ment of acreage from block hold­ers who are not pro­duc­ing and ful­fill­ing oblig­a­tions.

Her­itage added it is con­tin­u­ing to build lo­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty through our land and off­shore drilling and workover pro­grammes, with the ma­jor­i­ty of the over 700 peo­ple em­ployed by over 15 con­trac­tor com­pa­nies sup­port­ing these op­er­a­tions, pro­vid­ing ser­vices com­ing from our fence line/neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

The com­pa­ny said it was al­so com­mit­ted the re­duc­tion of its car­bon foot­print and op­er­at­ing sus­tain­ably.

“Her­itage con­tin­ues to shape our sus­tain­abil­i­ty agen­da and has pub­lished our first En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Gov­er­nance (ESG) Re­port on Ju­ly 5, on our cor­po­rate web­site. This re­port tells the nar­ra­tive of our jour­ney high­light­ing our key achieve­ments and our com­mit­ment to con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment, our mon­i­tor­ing and re­port­ing of green­house gas emis­sions and our peo­ple agen­da.

“It will pro­vide a base­line for mea­sur­ing fu­ture progress and as we move ahead, we will pro­vide up­dates on our pro­grammes, poli­cies and ini­tia­tives as well as an eval­u­a­tion of key ESG risks and op­por­tu­ni­ties via this medi­um.”