Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration has an­nounced that its Co­ho gas fa­cil­i­ty and pipeline will com­mence pre-com­mis­sion­ing and com­mis­sion­ing op­er­a­tions, rep­re­sent­ing the com­pa­ny’s first nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion.

In a re­lease, the com­pa­ny said the pre-com­mis­sion­ing of the gas fa­cil­i­ty and pipeline con­sists of test­ing all elec­tron­ics, alarms, and op­er­at­ing sys­tems in the fa­cil­i­ty, test­ing of the flare and emer­gency shut­down sys­tems, as well as purg­ing air from the sys­tem us­ing in­ert ni­tro­gen gas. Sub­se­quent to these op­er­a­tions, sys­tem com­mis­sion­ing op­er­a­tions will com­mence, which en­tails the in­tro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas from the Co­ho-1 well in­to the fa­cil­i­ty and pipeline in a step rate man­ner, of­fi­cial­ly bring­ing the sys­tem on­stream to the Cen­tral block nat­ur­al gas fa­cil­i­ty, the com­pa­ny fur­ther ex­plained.

Paul Baay, pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer said, “The com­ple­tion of the Co­ho fa­cil­i­ty and pipeline will be a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for Touch­stone, as it will rep­re­sent our first nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and is ex­pect­ed to dou­ble our cur­rent pro­duc­tion on a boe ba­sis.

“Through­out this process we have en­coun­tered chal­lenges that have pro­vid­ed us valu­able knowl­edge to stream­line the con­struc­tion of the Cas­cadu­ra fa­cil­i­ty.”

He added that dur­ing the pre-com­mis­sion­ing and com­mis­sion­ing process, the com­pa­ny will need to bal­ance the sys­tem with the well, pipeline and Cen­tral block fa­cil­i­ty.

“We will keep all stake­hold­ers in­formed of our progress, and I would per­son­al­ly like to thank our share­hold­ers for their con­tin­ued pa­tience as we pro­ceed to full com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion,” Baay added.