Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s proven crude oil re­serves have in­creased by more than 20 mil­lion bar­rels ac­cord­ing to a re­cent au­dit done by Nether­land, Sewell and As­so­ciates Inc, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan has re­vealed.

Khan said in ad­di­tion to this the au­dit states that T&T’s prob­a­ble and pos­si­ble re­serves have al­so in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

He said this is a hope­ful sign. The au­dit was as at De­cem­ber 31, 2018.

“All cat­e­gories of Re­serves in­creased be­tween the 2012 au­dit and the 2018 au­dit. Proved Re­serves jumped by 10.3 per cent from 199.5 mil­lion bar­rels to 220.1 mil­lion bar­rels. Prob­a­ble Re­serves rose by 16.6 per cent from 85.5 mil­lion bar­rels to 99.7 mil­lion bar­rels and Pos­si­ble Re­serves climbed by 8.5 per cent from 124.8 mil­lion bar­rels to 135.5 mil­lion bar­rels,” Khan said.

“The 20.6 mil­lion bar­rel in­crease in Proved Re­serves is a hope­ful sign, and is thanks to the ma­tu­ri­ty of, and op­er­a­tor com­mit­ment to proved un­de­vel­oped op­por­tu­ni­ties on­shore Trinidad and in the West Coast Ma­rine Area,” he said.

Khan said the na­tion’s Con­tin­gent Re­sources al­so rose by 17.2 per cent—from 58 mil­lion bar­rels in 2012 to 68 mil­lion bar­rels in 2018.

“A 36.8 per cent de­crease in the es­ti­mates for the East Coast Ma­rine Area be­tween au­dits was off­set by a 25.7 mil­lion bar­rel ad­di­tion from On­shore Trinidad in 2018.

He said this con­tri­bu­tion came from sev­er­al well-known fields such as Bar­rack­pore, Pe­nal and Par­ry­lands, as well as one op­er­a­tional and one pro­posed flood­ing project.

“I’m proud to an­nounce that NSAI’s in­de­pen­dent, Best Es­ti­mate of our Un­risked Prospec­tive Re­sources is now a mam­moth 3.2 bil­lion bar­rels. This is an in­crease of 773.4 per cent over the Un­risked Prospec­tive Re­sources at 1 Jan­u­ary 2012 of on­ly 368.2 mil­lion bar­rels. This no­table Re­source es­ti­mate, more than 90 per cent of which was iden­ti­fied in the Deep­wa­ter would not be pos­si­ble with­out the achieve­ments of BHP and its part­ner Shell in ac­quir­ing, pro­cess­ing and in­ter­pret­ing prospects iden­ti­fied in the Souther­ly Deep­wa­ter Blocks,” Khan said.

‘With the In­vic­tus drill­ship now in tran­sit to Trinidad and To­ba­go from the Gulf of Mex­i­co to drill the Broad­side prospect, a com­mer­cial dis­cov­ery in any of its sev­er­al stacked Miocene tar­gets, would de-risk the prospec­tive re­sources iden­ti­fied by NSAI sig­nif­i­cant­ly and be very good news for Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Khan said when the proven re­serves of con­den­sate for 2018, es­ti­mat­ed by the Ry­der Scott Com­pa­ny, are added to the proven crude oil re­serves, our proven re­serves of crude oil and con­den­sate are 256.9 mil­lion bar­rels.

This ex­ceeds the fig­ure at 1 Jan­u­ary 2012 by 14.0 mil­lion bar­rels or 5.7 per cent, he said.

“Up­ward Re­vi­sions based on bet­ter pro­duc­tion per­for­mance and com­mit­ted projects re­sult­ed in a re­serves re­place­ment ra­tio of 107.2 per cent be­tween au­dits. The re­serves to pro­duc­tion ra­tio based on the oil and con­den­sate pro­duc­tion and re­serves in 2018 on a proved ba­sis is 11.1 years,” he said.

“This is an in­crease of 54.2 per cent from the 2012 fig­ure of 7.2 years. This change is in part due to the de­creased pro­duc­tion of 23.2 mil­lion bar­rels in 2018, which was 10.4 mil­lion bar­rels less than was pro­duced in the year pre­ced­ing the 2012 au­dit. But our sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er proved re­serves of crude oil and con­den­sate in 2018, rel­a­tive to 2012 was an­oth­er fac­tor,” Khan said.

Khan said be­sides the po­ten­tial oil wind­fall in the Deep­wa­ter, since the De­cem­ber 31, 2018 cut-off date for this au­dit there have been sev­er­al en­cour­ag­ing oil dis­cov­er­ies and con­tin­ued ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment by op­er­a­tors that can have a pos­i­tive im­pact on re­serves.

He high­light­ed:

· BHP’s Block 3a Ru­by field, which will boost the coun­try’s pro­duc­tion by 15,000 bopd in 2022, has been ap­proved and could be pro­mot­ed from Con­tin­gent Re­sources to Re­serves in a fu­ture oil au­dit.

· Ex­plo­ration is con­tin­u­ing in the 2013 On­shore Com­pet­i­tive Bid Round Blocks of Or­toire and Rio Claro as Touch­stone and Lease Op­er­a­tors Lim­it­ed re­spec­tive­ly fol­low up on the Barakat, Co­ho, Cas­cadu­ra dis­cov­er­ies.

· Colum­bus En­er­gy an­nounced in April an oil dis­cov­ery in the Low­er and Mid­dle Cruse sands at the Saf­fron Well, lo­cat­ed in the South West Penin­su­la.

· The 2020 Deep­Wa­ter Nom­i­na­tion Pe­ri­od is al­most com­plet­ed and should re­sult in a Com­pet­i­tive Bid Round that would per­mit the con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment of re­serves and re­sources for the fu­ture.

· Trin­mar be­gan us­ing the Mo­bile Off­shore Pro­duc­tion and Com­pres­sion Unit (MOPU) since De­cem­ber 2019 to per­form pro­duc­tion and com­pres­sion du­ties. It is ex­pect­ed to add ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,840 bopd on av­er­age in­cre­men­tal pro­duc­tion for 2019/2020.

Asked if he thought with the po­ten­tial in­crease in Her­itage pro­duc­tion and the ad­di­tion­al 15,000 bar­rels of oil per day from BHP if he thought this coun­try’s pro­duc­tion could re­turn to 100,000 bo/d, Khan said with some luck it was pos­si­ble.

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter said the Year End 2019 Trinidad and To­ba­go Nat­ur­al Gas Re­serves Au­dit Re­port is in fi­nal draft form and will be com­plet­ed in a mat­ter of a week or two.