DR HASLEY VINCENT
Success in exploration for oil and gas resources is vital to establish an oil and gas industry and maintain significant levels of production. The hydrocarbon industry in TT has been fortunate, with several exploration successes during its history. These successes have had the single largest impact on the volume of crude oil produced relative to alternative measures of increasing production, such as enhanced oil recovery.
The process of exploration for oil and gas resources involves assessing various hydrocarbon play parameters to determine the likelihood of finding new accumulations that can be recovered commercially, given existing technology.
Industries are built on successful outcomes, though the chances of these are typically less than one in five, depending on the maturity of the hydrocarbon play and the quality of geophysical and geological workflows used.
Crude oil production in TT is currently at a mature stage, having been in continuous decline for the past 44 years, since peak production was attained in 1978.
The intent of the current administration is to ensure that crude oil continues to play a significant role in the country’s primary energy mix, and this can only be achieved if the production decline rate is minimised or reversed.
Exploration drilling can achieve this through the discovery of new fields, deeper reservoirs or bypassed resources.
As TT embarks upon a competitive bidding round for land acreage, it is timely to review past exploration successes and the positive impact they had on oil production over the span of the industry.
Phase I – The land era (1908-1957)
Commercial oil production began in 1908, with production from oil wells in the Point Fortin area.
[caption id="attachment_976279" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Pumping jacks along the Petrotrin Field Road. File photo/Jeff K Mayers -[/caption]
This marked the beginning of the oil industry and the start of the first phase of commercial exploration. Crude production increased steadily till 1940 with the discovery of numerous fields in what is known as the Southern Basin, including Goudron, Guayaguayare, Point Fortin, Palo Seco and Forest Reserve.
The early 1940s saw the first decline in production, which recovered by the early 1950s, when the highest production for that period was recorded in 1954 at approximately 65,000 barrels of oil per day.
This recovery was due to increases in annual drilling footage and the discovery of several additional land fields by 1957, including Moruga East-North-West, Rock Dome, Inniss and Navette. These new fields had an immediate impact on crude oil production.
Production to this time was exclusively from land-based operations, which included submarine reservoirs from highly deviated land wells at Point Ligoure. By the end of this phase, 84 per cent of the fields across land areas had been discovered, which included the largest-producing fields known in the Southern Basin area (eg Palo Seco, Forest Reserve, Penal-Barrackpore).
Phase II – The marine era
