With the 2020 Ryder Scott report completed, showing overall declines in reserves but highlighting a few areas where there was increases in production, the Ministry of Energy is now looking forward to new opportunities in the new year.
That would come, in the first instance, in the form of the deep water bid round announced on December 5 in Houston Texas, and again on Tuesday along with the reading of the Ryder Scott report. The bid round is for 17 blocks of the northern and eastern coasts of Trinidad and Tobago.
While several factors still affect how much interest is gained from the bid round and how it will translate into exploration and by extension revenue for TT, the next six months will determine how the country manages its oil and gas industry.
Ryder Scott dips in proven reserves
On Tuesday, Energy Minister Stuart Young explained that the Ryder Scott report was an indication of the level of TT's natural gas reserves.
[caption id="attachment_929868" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The Ministry of Energy announced 17 deep water blocks up for bid on the northern and eastern coasts of TT. Image courtesy the Ministry of Energy -[/caption]
“The Ryder Scott report is critical to everyone in the industry that is operating in the gas hydrocarbon sector, to know what is currently there and to know what is on the horizon,” he said.
The report reflected a need for more investment in exploration and drilling so that resources could be moved from categories of higher risk to lower risk, and finally to be taken out of the ground for commercial use.
As far as risk is concerned, it is divided into three categories based on the certainty that the resources could be extracted. P1 and C1 are proven resources with a 90 per cent certainty of commercial extraction. After that the certainty goes down to 50 per cent, or probable resources – P2 and C2; and then possible resources – P3 and C3 reserves with a 10 per cent chance of commercial extraction.
The report indicated declines, of which the covid19 pandemic was a factor in decreased exploration. P1 reserves amounted to 10.2 tcf, down from 10.7 tcf from last year. Young explained that production of about 1.06 tcf was replaced by about 0.6 tcf.
However in the riskier, probable categories there was an increase by 5.4 per cent, with exploration resources increasing by 10 per cent thanks to leads identified by the ministry.
This means that while there are gas reserves, the larger share is in the riskier areas, thus the need for TT to break into deep water exploration.
The new frontier
While Young described deep water exploration as a new frontier and regime, oil and gas giants such as Shell, Exxon and BHP have not only shown interest but followed up with bids since the mid-1990s.
The first deep water well Haydn 1 was drilled in 1999, three years after four blocks were awarded to Shell, AGIP and Exxon in 1996.
[caption id="attachment_929869" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Heading for Graph: Yearly Gas Production (bcf)A graph presented as part of the 2020
