JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

BHP continues its deepwater exploration

by

Curtis Williams
1758 days ago
20200916
Deepwater Invictus

Deepwater Invictus

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

Aus­tralian Out­fit BHP Bil­li­ton has dis­cov­ered be­tween 5 and 6.6 tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf) of nat­ur­al gas in T&T’s deep­wa­ter, ac­cord­ing to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at a news con­fer­ence to dis­cuss the re­turn of the Deep­wa­ter In­vic­tus drill ship and its spud­ding of the Broad­side 1 well, Khan said BHP had made sig­nif­i­cant nat­ur­al gas dis­cov­er­ies.

“To date BHP has drilled 10 ex­plo­ration wells, con­duct­ed 3D sur­veys in ex­cess of 21,000 square kilo­me­tres cov­er­ing its nine blocks as well as 16 un­li­censed blocks. Sev­en (7) of the ten (10) ex­plo­ration wells drilled were suc­cess­ful in find­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6.6 TCF of com­mer­cial­ly vi­able nat­ur­al gas bear­ing sands.”

When asked by Guardian Me­dia on where the 6.6 tcf of gas is lo­cat­ed, BHP’s Vice Pres­i­dent, Ex­plo­ration So­nia Scarsel­li said the com­pa­ny had on­ly de­clared its 3.5 tcf in its North­ern Li­cense which she added has fur­ther up­side po­ten­tial and was in the process of eval­u­at­ing the oth­er dis­cov­er­ies.

Khan ex­plained that from a ge­o­log­i­cal stand­point BHP holds the view of Trinidad and To­ba­go as a “world class source rock” com­pris­ing prospec­tive acreage, its re­la­tion­ship to the Orinoco Riv­er sys­tem and the great pos­si­bil­i­ty that it holds sig­nif­i­cant traps of hy­dro­car­bons.

“It con­sid­ers that Trinidad and To­ba­go is a de­po­si­tion en­vi­ron­ment sim­i­lar to the Niger Delta and the Gulf of Mex­i­co and some of the oth­er big­ger delta­ic basins....To date the com­pa­ny ex­pend­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1.0 bil­lion in ge­o­log­i­cal, geo­phys­i­cal and drilling work.” The En­er­gy Min­is­ter ex­plained.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was the fea­ture speak­er at the event and not­ed that BHP has ap­plied to the Min­istry of En­er­gy to en­ter in­to the Mar­ket De­vel­op­ment Phase for Blocks 23(a) and TTDAA 14 (BHP’s North­ern Li­cense).

He said if found to be eco­nom­ic, first gas could be as ear­ly as 2026.

Row­ley not­ed that BHP had be­gun drilling its Broad­side-1 well which is ex­pect­ed to test the oil play with­in BHP’s South­ern Deep­wa­ter Blocks, which in­cludes TTDAA 3, 5 and 6.

“If the finds of the Broad­side well are promis­ing, it can in­form the drilling of fur­ther ex­plo­ration wells in near­by blocks. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a com­mer­cial dis­cov­ery in any of Broad­side’s Miocene tar­gets could de-risk the ma­jor­i­ty of the prospec­tive re­sources iden­ti­fied by Nether­land, Sewell and As­so­ciates, Inc. (NSAI) in its au­dit of the coun­try’s crude oil re­serves and re­sources for year-end 2018.’ Row­ley not­ed.

Scarsel­li said if a dis­cov­ery is made this year in Broad­side, and it is com­mer­cial, it is un­like­ly to come to mar­ket be­fore 2028/29.

Row­ley al­so re­vealed that the Jack­et for the Ru­by plat­form was be­ing in­stalled and drilling is ex­pect­ed to com­mence in Q4 2020.

Peak oil pro­duc­tion is ex­pect­ed to be 16,000 bar­rels of oil per day in Q1 2022, with first pro­duc­tion in No­vem­ber 2021.

Broad­side-1 is tar­get­ing a much deep­er hori­zon with the plan to pen­e­trate the shal­low­ness of the in­ter­val where BHP had en­coun­tered oil seeps in the Le Clerc and Vic­to­ria wells.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored