Exxon
drills dry well
The Trinidad Guardian
Port
Spain
Petroleumworld.com
09 10 06
Exxon
has drilled yet another dry hole in Trinidad and
Tobago. This time its the Soldado 866 exploration
well which it drilled on behalf of Trinmar in the
South West Soldado field.
Senior
officials at the Ministry of Energy and Petrotrin
both confirmed the failure of the TT$54 million
well.
Exxon
entered into an agreement with Petrotrin to conduct
3d seismic in some of Trinmar’s acreage and
to drill one well on behalf of the state-owned company.
The
agreement came out of the failure and/or refusal
by the International Major to honour some parts
of a four-well exploration contract (not in Trinmar’s
acreage), which it had with the Ministry of Energy
under a production-sharing contract.
It
was a controversial decision by the government and
Petrotrin board’s to accept the offer from
Exxon rather than have the company pay a prescribed
default penalty in the sum of close to TT$240 million.
It
was a decision that angered some members of the
then Petrotrin Board leading to a then member being
fired and Prime Minister Patrick Manning admitting
he intervened in the interest of the best development
of the sector.
The
well was drilled to a depth of 10,000 feet.
It
was drilled to the cretaceous.
The Trinidad Guardian
Wednesday 30th August, 2006
Copyright
©2006 Trinidad Publishing Company Limited.
All Rights Reserved.
