Challenging year ahead for natural gas production—Khan

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Joel Julien

[email protected]

This year will be a challenging one for gas production in Trinidad and Tobago, Energy Minister Franklin Khan has said.

However things are “looking quite optimistic from 2022 and beyond”, he said.

Khan made the statement yesterday as the results of the annual audit of the non-associated natural gas reserves and resources of T&T for the year ended 2019 done by independent petroleum consultant Ryder Scott was released.

The audit was done virtually.

Khan said a consistent upward trend in Total Unrisked Technically Recoverable Resources over the period 2016 to 2019, continued.

“This growth period has now surpassed the last one from 2000 to 2002, both in terms of length and Resource additions. At the same time, gas production remained relatively flat between 2018 and 2019.” Khan stated.

In addition to this Khan noted that between 2018 and 2019, the country experienced 113 per cent replacement of Technically Recoverable Resources.

Khan said Exploration Resources declined from 2018 to 2019, after rising 34 per cent between 2016 and 2017 as the immense Deepwater Gas Resource leads were quantified and added to the report.

“The fall between 2018 and 2019 is partly due to prospect deletions arising from an unsuccessful well. Nonetheless, exploration success in the Deepwater was responsible for the movement of large volumes out of this category and into Technically Recoverable Resources,” Khan stated.

Khan said the audit report highlighted the following movements:

1. The 2017 Trinidad Region Onshore Compression Project, also known as (TROC), resulted in upward reserve adjustments for fields located in the Mahogany and Amherstia hubs such as Kapok, due mainly to better well performance and in the Angelin field due to remapping based on new well data. In Amherstia and Mango there were negative revisions due to performance and reclassifications.

2. For Shell, the revision of the Original Gas-in-Place (OGIP) due to seismic interpretation in the Endeavour field resulted in an addition of technically recoverable resources.

3. BHP had major success with the Bele, Boom, High-Hat and Tuk exploration wells. The Deepwater discoveries now account for the majority of BHP’s P1 + C1 Resources in Trinidad, by Ryder Scott’s estimation.

The audit for the year ended 2020 is expected to start in March.

“Ryder Scott’s geologists will be providing independent assessments of the Chinook-1 and Cascadura Deep gas discoveries by Touchstone in the Ortoire Block. Touchstone has estimated that the block could have as much as 500 – 600 bcf of wet natural gas and produce in excess of 200 mmscf/d of gas, and as much as 4000 barrels of condensate per day. Also on the agenda is a possible remapping of fields like Parula, Bounty and Endeavour drilled by EOG and Shell respectively, based on successful development wells and the revaluation of reserves based on well performance,” Khan stated.

Khan said currently the country averages just around 3.2 bcf per day.

“However, there are a lot of important projects that will be coming onstream at the beginning of 2022 and onwards,” he said.