BHP Billiton has obtained a five-year extension as operator of its oil and gas Block 2C, where its Angostura field is located.
Multiple sources in a position to know at both the company and the government of T&T have confirmed to the Business Guardian that the extension to 2031 has been approved and it will now allow the Australian outfit to continue producing both oil and gas from the field for the next nine years and drill at least two prospects that the company feels could enhance its production.
BHP is expected to get the official letter from the government by tomorrow indicating its approval of the extension.
The Business Guardian was told that BHP has been for some time, trying to get the extension approved, since its license ends in 2026, having been first extended in 2013 by the then UNC government. At the time of the first extension the original license was expected to expire in 2021 but was extended to 2026.
The company has continued to produce both oil and gas from the field and therefore it feels it can commercially extend the life of the block to 2031. This is also crucial because BHP and the new owner of its upstream assets, Woodside, would not invest if it had to close its operations in four years time. The approval now clears the way for further investment and production. It will also allow the country to rely on hundreds of millions of cubic feet of natural gas per day and close to 5,000 barrels of oil per day. This is also going to allow the government to continue to receive significant tax revenue from the company and give the NGC access to gas for the downstream petrochemical sector.
According to the company’s website, BHP Billiton began exploring in T&T in 1996, signing the country’s first production sharing contract under a new fiscal regime. Since that time BHP has been the only company to successfully pursue a new oil play offshore T&T.
In 1999, BHP Billiton made a natural gas discovery on Block 2(c) with the Angostura-1 well. In 2000, the Aripo-1 well also encountered a thick interval of gas pay and a thin oil reservoir.
The Kairi-1 well discovered oil and gas in August 2001. In subsequent testing, Kairi-1 flowed at rates up to 3,000 barrels of oil per day (bbl/d) , indicating the commercial oil potential of the accumulation.
Following the oil discovery at Kairi, an appraisal drilling program began assessing development options.
Drilling of Canteen-1 began in October 2001. Located on a separate fault block approximately 1.6 km north of Kairi-1, Canteen-1 demonstrated a lateral extension of the oil accumulation, encountering approximately 213 metres (700 feet) of gross hydrocarbon-bearing sands that included 61 metres (200 feet) of net oil pay and 54.5 metres (179 feet) of net gas pay. The well tested at a rate of approximately 3,700 barrels of oil per day through a 72/64-inch choke. The Kairi-2 (ST2) appraisal well drilled in early 2002 encountered a 98 metre (322 feet) gas column, and more importantly, an oil column of 71.6 metres (235 feet).
Block 2(c) is located approximately 38.5 kilometres (24 miles) east of Trinidad. During the six year exploration phase of the PSC, four exploration and three appraisal wells were drilled, discovering significant oil and gas resources within a large faulted structure known as the Greater Angostura Structure.
Angostura-1, drilled in 1999, was the discovery well for the field, intersecting some 950 feet (gross) of gas pay within Early Oligocene sands.
At the time of discovery it was thought that the gross recoverable oil reserves were between 90 and 300 million stock tank barrels (stb), with a mid case or P50 volumes of 160 million stb. The range of gross recoverable gas volumes was 1 to 2.3 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), with a mid-case volume of 1.75 Tcf.
Significant faulting has not allowed the company to produce the volume of oil it was expected to recover nor at the rate it had hoped, but the natural gas discovery has proven to been far more than originally thought, closer to 3 tcf.
