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Report paints bleak picture of Trinidad's natural gas reserves
Published: Friday | July 16, 2010
Trinidad and Tobago has 10 years of gas left in its proven reserves, a new report revealed this week.
The report by the US-based Ryder Scott Company shows that since 2000, proven natural gas reserves have declined from 19.7 trillion cubic feet (tcf) to 14.4 tcf in 2009, and that probable reserves stood at 7.8 tcf and possibly were 5.9 tcf of gas.
The reserves fell one trillion cubic feet last year alone.
Senior petroleum engineer with the Texas-based company, Larry McHalffney, said that the declining reserve figures painted a "bleak picture" of the country's oil and gas future, adding, "what appears to be is not always the case."
McHalffney said despite the steady decline in the proven gas reserve figures over the past nine years, the country maintained a "steady, stable reserve base".
Not surprised
Energy Minister Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan said she was not surprised at the results of the audit.
"We anticipated these results. You would have heard us speaking to the issues many times," she said.
"The important issue is how we address it and the plans going forward - the actions, the initiatives to be taken to address that situation."
Trinidad is dealing with the low reserves by moving aggressively with exploration.
"We are putting a programme in place to ensure that there is continuous exploration activity," said Seepersad-Bachan, noting that to satisfy the natural gas demand, Trinidad and Tobago had been tapping the reserves at a rate of 1.4 trillion cubic feet yearly.
"Our goal is 100 per cent replacement of annual gas production."
To achieve this, the energy minister said, Government would encourage the necessary exploration, appraisal and development drilling in order to move resources into the reserve categories.
"There must be significant and sustained exploration activity to maintain the reserve base," the energy minister said.
The stable reserve base, as outlined by the Ryder Scott audit, proved the country was on the right track, she added.
"This demonstrates that although our extraction rate has increased, we have been able to transfer exploration resources to the reserves category."
Seepersad-Bachan said to help bolster the declining figures in all three categories, the Kamla Persad-Bissessar administration has opened the competitive bid round for both the shallow and deep-water exploration.
The bidding process, which ends in August, has already attracted bids from at least eight companies.
"Our expectation is that these bids would lead to product-sharing contracts," she said.
The contracts are due for award by December
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