WHEN it comes to the natural gas reserves of Trinidad and Tobago, the country is on fairly frim ground.
This was the claim of Energy Minister Franklin Khan at the presentation of the gas audit results for the year end 2019 at the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries in Port-of-Spain on Thursday.
Khan said, “We are sitting on fairly firm ground as far as the reserves position goes. On the production side, we have a challenging 2021 but things are looking quite optimistic from 2022 and beyond.”
According to Khan, on the production side, the following projects were expected to come on stream in the near future:
- BHP’s Ruby project in Q3 2021, producing 150 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd);
- BP’s Matapal in 2022, producing 300mmscfd, and an estimated incremental production increase of 300mmscfd from the Cassia-C project, also in 2022;
- Shell’s Barracuda and Colibri in 2021 and 2022, with a cumulative capacity of an additional 450 mmscfd; and
- Shell’s Manatee development in 2025, which was as a result of the successful delinking with a capacity ranging 350mmscf/d to 700 mmscfd.
- Further down, 2026 and beyond, BHP is developing its deep water gas resources, which has the potential somewhere between 600mmscfd to 1bcf per day.
The energy minister said, “That is the state of play here at the MEEI, where we are the custodian and regulator of the natural gas industry, and we want to give the nation the commitment that we will continue to use our best efforts to manage the energy resources and the natural gas resources in a way to benefit all the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago.”
He said currently T&T averages 3.2 billion cubic feet of gas per day.
Khan said the audit was conducted by the Ryder Scott Company, which began conducting natural gas audits for and on behalf of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago since 2000.
Ryder Scott has completed audits annually till the 2019 with the exception of 2005, he said.
