BPTT confirms significant gas discovery in Trinidad
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) – BPTT has confirmed the discovery of two trillion cubic feet of gas in the Savannah and Macadamia exploration wells off Trinidad’s south-east coast, which it said would be used to service the international and domestic markets.
“The gas from these discoveries would go to both Atlantic and the domestic market. So this is a benefit to both sides of the equation in terms of where our supplies go,” BPTT Regional President Norman Christie told a news conference Thursday.Christie said that while the discovery would certainly ease the gas shortage in Trinidad he cautioned that “we have to keep these discoveries going so we can be ‘past the worst’, for a longer period.BP’s Chief Executive of Upstream, Bernard Looney, who flew in to Trinidad and Tobago announced the discovery saying “today is about celebrating recent successes”.He said the completion of gas contract negotiations with the National Gas Company (NGC), the long-awaited sanction of the Angelin project by BP largely supported by the successful negotiations as well as the safe start-up of two projects — Sercan II with our partner EOG (EOG Resources) and the Trinidad Offshore Compression project (TROC) were also reasons for the celebrations.“We have found gas in commercial quantities in our two exploration wells, Savannah and Macadamia,” Looney said with Christie indicating that production is expected to start in the 2020 to 2021 time frame.Christie said the company has an offshore compression project which would start in the 2020 time period.“So what you should hear from (this) is a plan to get production to a healthy level and sustain that production level for the medium to long-term.”Energy Minister Franklin Khan, said that while the new discoveries would ease the gas shortage here, noting “I don’t want to be so predictive but BP has shared some good news today.“As I said earlier, EOG is the unsung hero in the Trinidad gas market. They have been quietly doing small developments and they’re contributing a fair amount of gas. More importantly, all of EOG’s gas goes to NGC…So between those three companies, I would want to say that by early 2019, if we haven’t made the gas curtailment issue disappear, we’ll be fairly close to that,” Khan said .