One year af­ter BPTT said it could not meet its nat­ur­al gas com­mit­ment for Train 1 be­cause of a failed in­fill drilling pro­gramme, records from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries show that the com­pa­ny has not had a dip in its pro­duc­tion and has main­tain the gas flow­ing at close to two bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day.

When the an­nounce­ment was made last year by the mul­ti-na­tion­al the com­pa­ny was in ne­go­ti­a­tion with the gov­ern­ment and its part­ners over Train 1 and the an­nounce­ment sent shock­waves in the coun­try.

The gov­ern­ment had been press­ing for a bet­ter deal in Train 1 and with the BPTT an­nounce­ment it raised the spec­tre of the Train be­ing shut down and the bet­ter deal hoped for by the gov­ern­ment not ma­te­ri­al­is­ing.

At the time BPTT rub­bished sug­ges­tions that the an­nounce­ment was re­lat­ed to on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tion with the Gov­ern­ment for the ex­ten­sion of the Train 1 LNG plant.

The com­pa­ny not­ed that an agree­ment had been reached on the price for the LNG to be pro­duced from Train 1 un­der a new, and as yet un­signed, gas sales and LNG off-take arrange­ments. It added that BPTT and the At­lantic 1 share­hold­ers were in dis­cus­sions to fi­nalise the terms of these arrange­ments when the dis­ap­point­ing well re­sults be­came known.

In re­sponse on Wednes­day to a se­ries of ques­tion from the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian BPTT said it was able to keep its pro­duc­tion at such a high lev­el be­cause of im­proved rates of de­cline from oth­er wells and bet­ter than ex­pect­ed per­for­mance from its Ju­niper and An­gelin gas fields.

The com­pa­ny said fol­low­ing the dis­ap­point­ing re­sults of the 2019 in­fill drilling pro­grammes it com­mit­ted to work­ing mul­ti­ple op­tions to sus­tain pro­duc­tion by man­ag­ing nat­ur­al rates of field de­cline.

These op­tions BPTT said were fo­cused main­ly on max­imis­ing base pro­duc­tion through a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors in­clud­ing:

1. Sys­tem pres­sure op­ti­mi­sa­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with At­lantic and NGC

2. Op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cien­cy im­prove­ment—in­clud­ing main­tain­ing the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of Trinidad On­shore Com­pres­sion (TROC)

3. In­creased well­work to im­prove pro­duc­tion from its ex­ist­ing wells.

4. The im­ple­men­ta­tion of new tech­nol­o­gy like ce­ram­ic screens which has as­sist­ed in max­imis­ing pro­duc­tion from ex­ist­ing wells.

5.Bet­ter than ex­pect­ed per­for­mance from the Ju­niper and An­gelin fields.

BPTT said: “Through the col­lab­o­rate ef­forts of our teams, NGC, At­lantic and oth­er stake­hold­ers we have been able to man­age nat­ur­al de­cline and main­tain our pro­duc­tion rate in­to 2020. Mov­ing for­ward, we will con­tin­ue to fo­cus on these mea­sures to man­age nat­ur­al de­cline in or­der to meet our ex­ist­ing long-term con­trac­tu­al com­mit­ments to At­lantic and NGC and to sup­ply any ad­di­tion­al vol­umes in­to Train 1.”

The com­pa­ny said the short-term sup­ply arrange­ments on Train 1 have re­cent­ly been ex­tend­ed to the end of 2020.

“We are cur­rent­ly re­view­ing our fore­cast pro­duc­tion for 2021 and be­yond and will con­tin­ue to work with the At­lantic stake­hold­ers to un­der­stand the op­tions for ex­tend­ing the Train 1 sup­ply arrange­ments be­yond 2020,” BPTT said.

Last year it an­nounced that its pro­duc­tion will fall by up to 300 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day in 2020 and 2021.

This would have rep­re­sent­ed a 15 per cent drop in pro­duc­tion.

BPTT last year told SBG “Giv­en re­cent dis­ap­point­ing re­sults on a cou­ple of in­fill wells, we are now un­like­ly to have the 200-300 mm­scf/d that we were ex­pect­ing to sup­ply in­to Train 1, es­pe­cial­ly in the 2020 to 2021 time­frame. These vol­umes would have been sup­plied un­der a new, as yet un­signed, gas sales agree­ment be­tween BPTT and At­lantic 1.”

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert at the time told the Par­lia­ment that the drilling cam­paign had re­sult­ed in on­ly one un­pro­duc­tive well and he found the con­cerns to be “alarmist.”

Im­bert in­sist­ed that the “BP wells with less than sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sults are on­ly two in num­ber and are in­fill wells in ex­ist­ing gas fields. Un­like ex­plo­ration wells, in­fill wells are nor­mal­ly brought in­to pro­duc­tion al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. I am ad­vised that one of these in­fill wells will go in­to pro­duc­tion short­ly, al­though with low­er vol­umes than an­tic­i­pat­ed, leav­ing just one un­pro­duc­tive well. All this dra­ma over one un­pro­duc­tive well is to­tal­ly un­nec­es­sary!”

But BPTT told Guardian Me­dia the two wells that failed were in its Can­non­ball and Cashima fields and while the fields are still pro­duc­ing it has had to re­vise its fore­cast for gas.

“The two wells con­cerned were in our Can­non­ball and Cashima fields. We will con­tin­ue to pro­duce gas from the ex­ist­ing wells in the Can­non­ball and Cashima fields, how­ev­er, we have re­vised our pro­duc­tion fore­cast for the 2020-2021 pe­ri­od in these two fields. We will re­view the re­sults from these two wells and ap­ply any learn­ings in­to fu­ture in­fill drilling pro­grammes.”

BPTT is by far the largest nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­er in the coun­try with an av­er­age pro­duc­tion of 2 bil­lion cu­bic feet per day.

The com­pa­ny said last year “There is no im­pact on fore­cast pro­duc­tion from our oth­er fields and there is no im­pact on our 2019-2020 ex­plo­ration drilling pro­gramme or on our sanc­tioned new field de­vel­op­ments, An­gelin, Cas­sia Com­pres­sion and Mat­a­pal. We will con­tin­ue to bring on new wells in An­gelin as planned this year and con­tin­ue to tar­get first gas from Cas­sia Com­pres­sion in the sec­ond half of 2021 and Mat­a­pal in 2022. We will al­so step up our fo­cus on well work and sys­tem op­ti­mi­sa­tion to max­imise base pro­duc­tion from our ex­ist­ing fields.”