Ramnarine: Bright future for T&T’s gas

Although the latest Ryder Scott gas reserve audit for T&T shows a seven per cent reduction, Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine says there are bright prospects in terms of the country’s exploration resources. In his address at the presentation of the audit at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain, the minister said with seven deepwater production sharing contracts already in force and two to be signed before the end of the year, there is potential for 30.8 trillion cubic feet (TCF) in gas. “That potential has not yet crept in to the Ryder Scott numbers,” he said. Ramnarine said the country’s largest gas producer, bpTT, has completed its drilling activity on the Savonette Field using the Rowan EXL II rig and recently announced its Juniper project.

He said another major producer, British Gas (BG), is bringing to an end its Starfish three-well development programme. “We expect first gas from Starfish by November, 2014, at a plateau rate of about 220 million standard cubic feet of natural gas per day,” Ramnarine said. EOG Resources, with its Oilbird development programme, will continue to provide natural gas to domestic customers and BHP Billiton to start work in 2015 on the Angostura Phase III development, he added. The minister said the trend of increased foreign investment in the sector is projected to continue, with bpTT spending around US $1 billion a year and significant investments expected from BHP Billiton in the deepwater and Petrotrin in their Soldado acreage. “One of the things that the ministry has also been pursuing is the procurement of a consultant for a gas master plan. I’m pleased to announce that the Central Tenders Board has completed the exercise and they have selected a preferred consultant and the ministry will now enter into talks with that consultant,” he saud.

Ramnarine said activities are planned in the upstream and in the shallow and average acreage around T&T, with three licences being finalised for land exploration. “So exploration towards the end of the decade should begin to migrate resources into reserves and we should start to see a stabilisation of numbers that we have for these audits,” he said. “I would say that it was unfortunate that some of the wells that were supposed to have been drilled in 2013—exploration wells—were not drilled and were deferred. Had they been drilled, these numbers may have been different here today. But by and large, there’s a lot of work that is coming in the near future. Those numbers should start to improve in the years to come.”

GUARDIAN