BHP makes significant gas discovery

BHP makes significant gas discovery

BHP makes significant gas discovery

BHP Bil­li­ton’s Bon­gos-2 well was a sig­nif­i­cant gas dis­cov­ery in deep wa­ter, ac­cord­ing to mul­ti­ple sources in the com­pa­ny.

The well did not just “en­counter hy­dro­car­bons”, as was an­nounced by the en­er­gy com­pa­ny last month, but is a ma­jor gas dis­cov­ery hav­ing pen­e­trat­ed the three gas sands the com­pa­ny was aim­ing at when it first drilled the well. This means that of the four deep wa­ter wells drilled by BHP two have ma­jor gas dis­cov­er­ies, with Le Clerc en­coun­ter­ing more than 5 tcf of gas. In ad­di­tion, Vic­to­ria has en­coun­tered gas in the same block as Le Clerc and on­ly one well was deep and com­mer­cial.

Bon­gos-2 is lo­cat­ed in BHP’s north­ern con­tract area, east of To­ba­go in deep-wa­ter block 14. The com­pa­ny holds a 70 per cent stake in the block with re­main­ing 30 per cent be­long­ing to bpTT.

This week, BHP was asked the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

• Has drilling been com­plet­ed in the Bon­gos 2 deep wa­ter well ?

• Was gas/oil/ or oil and gas found?

• Is the dis­cov­ery a sig­nif­i­cant one?

• How many feet of pay did BHP find and did it go through three gas sands?

• Is BHP go­ing to drill any ad­di­tion­al well in the same block?

In re­sponse, com­pa­ny of­fi­cials would on­ly re­peat the state­ment it has been mak­ing since Au­gust: “The Bon­gos-2 ex­plo­ration well was spud on 22 Ju­ly 2018 and en­coun­tered hy­dro­car­bons. Drilling is still in progress and this is all we can share at this time. As soon as we have more in­for­ma­tion I’ll let you know.”

At the time of BHP’s re­sponse the Bon­gos-2 well was al­ready com­plet­ed and the rig moved from the block.

“We are all very pleased with this well. We were able to pen­e­trate all the gas zones we were aim­ing for and we be­lieve that apart from sig­nif­i­cant gas the struc­ture could have oil in the deep­er hori­zons,” said one com­pa­ny source.

No oil was en­coun­tered in the Bon­gos-2 well even though it was drilled deep­er than was orig­i­nal­ly planned, but in­for­ma­tion gath­ered from the well has led BHP of­fi­cials to be­lieve there could al­so be oil in the block.

Bon­gos-2 was spud af­ter Bon­gos-1 ex­pe­ri­enced me­chan­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ty short­ly af­ter it was drilled. This would mean good news for the coun­try and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert as he pre­pares to present in 2018/2019 an­nu­al bud­get.

The re­al­i­ty is that even with the best will, this dis­cov­ery will take an­oth­er five to sev­en years to come to mar­ket and it would put the gov­ern­ment in a bet­ter po­si­tion to as­sure in­vestors in the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor that T&T has gas for a long time to come, there­by in­creas­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence.

It may al­so al­low the gov­ern­ment to be­gin to look at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of oth­er down­stream in­vest­ments in the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor and in­crease the coun­try’s rev­enue streams.

Im­bert is ex­pect­ed to an­nounce that 2019 will see an in­crease in drilling, with BHP drilling the fi­nal well in its phase two deep wa­ter cam­paign.

The next well it will spud, Con­cep­tion, will be drilled in block 5 c where the Le Clerc and Vic­to­ria dis­cov­er­ies were made as the com­pa­ny fur­ther tests the size and ex­tent of the struc­ture.