Cur­tis Williams

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

Re­gion­al pres­i­dent of BPTT Claire Fitz­patir­ck has ad­mit­ted that the present up­stream com­pa­nies that pro­vide nat­ur­al gas to At­lantic LNG may change as con­tracts come to an end.

Re­spond­ing to a state­ment from BHP pres­i­dent op­er­a­tions, pe­tro­le­um Ger­al­dine Slat­tery that the com­pa­ny was eye­ing LNG for its deep-wa­ter gas in its North­ern Li­cense area Fitz­patrick opened the door to the Aus­tralian out­fit:

She ex­plained: “BHP does not have in­ter­est in At­lantic but if you think about it from At­lantic own­er’s per­spec­tive, fields de­cline, con­tracts roll off, if you have in­vest­ed in the in­fra­struc­ture it is in your best in­ter­est to have that ca­pac­i­ty as full as pos­si­ble. So there will be no in­cen­tive for At­lantic share­hold­ers to not want gas through those fa­cil­i­ties. For any of these ven­tures around the world, that’s the nat­ur­al way things would hap­pen.”

Fitz­patrick in­sist­ed it was pre­ma­ture to say where the mol­e­cules from BHP’s deep-wa­ter gas will go will go since in BHP’s re­cent pre­sen­ta­tion it talked about first gas in 2026, 2027 time frame.

“At that point, the de­cline in the ex­ist­ing fields will have tak­en its course with all the mit­i­ga­tions that we are do­ing. In terms of where gas will go in 2026 and 2027 we will see.” Fitz­patrick told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Slat­tery re­cent­ly said that BHP’s north­ern de­vel­op­ment as­sumes ac­cess to ex­ist­ing LNG in­fra­struc­ture in T&T, which has spare ca­pac­i­ty.

She said that as the op­er­a­tor, with high eq­ui­ty in­ter­est, BHP al­so has the scope to op­ti­mise the de­vel­op­ment plan­ning and the de­vel­op­ment con­cept. Slat­tery stat­ed: “Sub­ject to be­ing com­pet­i­tive for cap­i­tal, we see an FID (Fi­nal In­vest­ment De­ci­sion) from 2022.”

Dur­ing the Q&A seg­ment, Gold­man Sachs em­ploy­ee Paul Young ques­tioned Slat­tery as to whether spare ca­pac­i­ty will open at At­lan­tic LNG. He al­so asked if BHP has enough re­sources to move ahead with its plan or if the com­pa­ny’s plans are con­tin­gent on fur­ther ex­plo­ra­tion.

Slat­tery said that the LNG con­cep­tu­al de­vel­op­ment is in the ear­ly stages. She con­tin­ued: “In terms of the re­source ques­tion, there is suf­fi­cient re­source in what we have dis­cov­ered to­day and booked in our con­tin­gent re­source.”

Slat­tery al­so ar­gued that there is “up­side be­yond that, from one of our most re­cent wells, which isn’t ac­tu­al­ly cap­tured in that, and there’s fur­ther ap­praisal that we need to do.”

How­ev­er, Slat­tery not­ed that for “the con­tin­gent re­source that we have re­port­ed, that does sup­port the de­vel­op­ment.”

In terms of ac­cess to the LNG fa­cil­i­ty, Slat­tery said that BHP in­tends to ac­cess the LNG mar­ket and the do­mes­tic mar­ket. She al­so in­di­cat­ed that the do­mes­tic mar­ket in T&T is a strong mar­ket with am­mo­nia and methanol de­mand in­creas­ing.

“In terms of the LNG fa­cil­i­ty, there is ul­lage avail­able, cer­tain­ly as we look out to­wards a po­ten­tial first gas time­line. There are few re­port­ed, that we un­der­stand, ma­te­r­i­al gas re­sources that would com­pe­te for that ul­lage.”

Mean­while, Young asked, how BHP would nav­i­gate with their dis­cov­er­ies, not­ing that BP holds a 30 per cent non-op­er­a­tor share of the blocks in the north­ern li­cense area and sig­nif­i­cant eq­ui­ty hold­in­gs in At­lan­tic LNG.

Slat­tery ex­plained, “From the out­set, we did pur­pose­ful­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly part­ner with BP, giv­en that they are in­volved with the mid­stream.”

She added that the north­ern li­cens­es will be a “sub­sea in­te­grat­ed de­vel­op­ment and we as­sume at this point for the pur­pos­es of the il­lus­tra­tion that we tie in­to shal­low wa­ter in­fra­struc­ture that al­lows ac­cess in­to ul­ti­mate­ly the do­mes­tic mar­ket and the LNG mar­ket.”