New audit of natural gas reserves nearly done
PORT SPAIN
Trinidad & Tobago Express
Petroleumworldtt.com
06 17 09
A new audit of the nation's natural gas reserves is now being completed, even as global price averages continue to struggle to regain last year's mark of US$7 per million British thermal units (mmbtu).
Gas prices remained just below US$4 per mmbtu as the commodity markets closed for the week yesterday.
Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries permanent secretary Leroy Myers made the disclosure about the latest gas audit yesterday as he announced the "possibility" of contracts for the exploration of two marine blocks that would "close the 2005/2006 bid round".
Myers did so at the Red House in Port of Spain yesterday where he appeared before the Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which is chaired by Opposition Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal.
"We're now completing the 2009 natural gas reserves study, and we expect announcements would be made shortly, I think, probably within the next month. So that gives you the figures for our natural gas reserves," Mayers said.
He also noted the Energy Ministry has close to 300 staff and an annual administrative cost of $40-50 million, which allows them to "operate a tight ship".
The last natural gas audit, which was carried out by the Houston-based firm Ryder Scott, stated that this country had proven reserves of 16.9 trillion cubic feet (tcf) for the year ended December 31, 2007, which equated to about 13 years worth of supplies if no future exploration were to take place. That audit also revealed that probable and possible gas reserves stood at 7.8 tcf and 5.8 tcf respectively, which meant there was a total amount of exploration resources of 30.7 tcf, which is about one tcf less than the total for 2006-the year when Ryder Scott labelled an additional 37.1 tcf as unidentified reserves.
Myers said the global economic crisis has slowed local oil and gas exploration activity by major multinationals such as bp and BG.
"We're still conducting discussions with two such players. In fact, we are still in the midst of negotiations for two of those blocks. We're hoping that we could finalise those, so that at the end of the day, we'll probably, if we are successful as we expect we will be, then you're gonna see very shortly that two new blocks would be signed off, would be executed and that would bring to a close the 2005/2006 bid round."
Many of the PAC's members complimented the Energy Ministry for not having been the subject of any concerns by the auditor general in reports on the ministry's operations during 2006 and 2007.
Story by Juhel Browne from Trinidad & Tobago
Express
- jbrowne@trinidadexpress.com
Trinidad & Tobago Express
Saturday, June 6th 2009
Copyright© 2008
respective author or news agency. All rights
reserved.
We welcome the use of Petroleumworld™ stories
by anyone provided it mentions Petroleumworld.com
as the source. Other stories you have to get authorization
by its authors.
