Caption: Dr Roodal Moonilal. Photo: T&T Parliament
By Nalini Sudama
BP Trinidad and Tobago (bpTT) has completed its subsea Cypre drilling project months ahead of schedule.
This was according to Minister of Energy Dr Roodal Moonilal who was speaking at the Post-Cabinet media conference on Thursday.
According to Moonilal, bpTT announced that three wells have been completed in Phase Two of the project, adding to the four wells completed in March during Phase One in the seven-well project.
He said, “This has been done significantly ahead of schedule. In fact, ‘ahead of schedule’ is now the new norm under the second administration of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.”
The completion comes after the successful delivery of first gas in April this year.
Moonilal said that this development will boost Trinidad and Tobago’s natural gas supply by 10%.
The gas field is located 78 km off the southeast coast of Trinidad within the East Mayaro Block, with water 80 meters deep.
Moonilal said, “At peak production, this would deliver 45,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and more or less 250 million standard cubic feet of gas per day which is, more or less, at peak production, a ten per cent addition to our national gas output.”
He noted that the Cypre originated from the natural gas discoveries at the Macadamia well and South East Queen’s Beach reservoirs in 2017.
He attributed these discoveries to tax incentives introduced by the People’s Partnership in the Finance Act in 2014.
“This exploration incentive had a sunset clause, meaning that it expired on December 2017. It was for that reason BP drilled the that exploration well in March 2017 and the Savannah exploration well in 2016,” said Moonilal.
“The Savannah exploration well resulted in the Matapal project, which has been in production since 2021. If the exploration incentive was not provided in 2014, these two projects would not have materialized, and our natural gas production would be much worse than it currently is.”
