Moonilal On Declining Oil Production: Urgent Action Needed

Minister of Energy in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), Dr Roodal Moonilal, has indicated that while local oil and gas production has been in decline for the past ten years, it is projected to increase over the next three.
Moonilal said that drilling programmes within the country needed to be accelerated. On land, exploration is being undertaken in six blocks with licences for acquiring and processing seismic data. Initial feedback has been positive. Onshore production, which in 2015 amounted to 22,616 barrels of oil per day, had declined to 18,005 in 2020 and slipped further to 17,000 this year. Heritage Petroleum Company Ltd, he said, accounts for most of the decline over the last five years.
He noted that Heritage needs to make better use of its acreage and that a policy being considered was a reassessment of how it partners with lease operators and farmout companies. The company has proposed targeting deeper horizons¹ in its land acreage to improve its oil production, he said.
This was not previously possible as Heritage did not have rights for its Cruze Horizon Block, Guapo Oropouche Brighton Horizon Block, Herrera Horizon Block and Mayaro/Guayaguayare Horizon Block. Through ministry negotiations, the licences for these blocks are being amended to include rights to deeper horizons, and in return, Heritage has committed to the drilling of one exploration well in each of the blocks. These wells will range from 5,500 feet true vertical depth to 13,500 feet true vertical depth over the next three years.
Like oil, natural gas production has also been on the decline since 2015, falling from 3.8Bn cubic feet in that year to 2.54Bn cubic feet per day currently. He noted several projects, including bpTT's Cypre Phase 1 development, which came onstream with a peak production of 350 million standard cubic feet per day. While these are welcome, they will likely be combating natural decline from maturing reservoirs. Nonetheless, Moonilal noted that the outlook for oil in the short to medium term is positive.

^{______________________}¹In the oil and gas industry, "horizon" most commonly refers to a geological layer or boundary that can be identified in seismic data and is known to contain hydrocarbons.

(Source: Trinidad Express Newspapers)