BHP
confirms east coast find
Trinidad
Guardian
BHP Nabors Rig 657 on location at
Ruby 1
By By Curtis Williams
The Trinidad Guardian
Port
Spain
Petroleumworld.com
10 22 06
BHP
Billiton yesterday confirmed that it had made an
oil and gas discovery in Block 3a, off the East
Coast.
According
to the company it has to drill additional wells
to confirm it has commercial find but the well shows
significant potential.
In
a release the company said; ‘BHP Billiton
today announced the results of the Ruby-1 exploration
well that was recently drilled offshore Trinidad.
The well and subsequent testing confirm an oil and
gas resource with commercial potential in shallow
waters off the east coast of Trinidad.”
Yesterday’s
Business Guardian reported exclusively on the discovery
which is the second oil discovery by BHP Billiton
in the last five years.
The
find comes after thirty years of failure to make
a significant oil discovery off the East coast although
large world scale gas fields have been found.
BHP
Billiton revealed that Ruby-1 reached a total depth
of 5,750 feet (true vertical depth) and encountered
approximately 1,200 feet TVD (gross) of hydrocarbon-bearing
sands with more than 800 TVD feet of net pay. The
well tested at a rate of nearly 5,000 barrels of
oil per day through a 7/8th-inch choke.
The
well is located nearly 30 miles off the Northeast
coast of Trinidad in water depths of 200 feet, approximately
five miles east of the central processing platform
for the Greater Angostura Field, a BHP Billiton-operated
development in Block 2(c), which is adjacent to
Block 3(a).
Drilling
of the Ruby-1 well began the first week of September.
“We
are very pleased to have found hydrocarbons, and
now we will study the results to see what type of
oil accumulation we have,” explained Steve
Bell, President of Exploration for BHP Billiton
Petroleum. “Further analysis in co-ordination
with our co-venturers will determine our next steps
for this discovery.”
Prime
Minister Patrick Manning yesterday praised the development
saying BHP Billiton was being conservative because
it did not want to make the same mistakes as it
did in Angostura by over estimating the size of
the discovery. The flow rates are similar to those
found in the Kairi 1 and Canteen 1 wells which formed
the basis for the Angostura development.
On
December 2001 BHP had announced its Angostura discovery
in which it said: “This is an early stage
of the appraisal programme and the data so far indicates
the accumulation is likely to be a multi-hundred
million barrel discovery.”
It
turned out that Angostura’s reserves were
less than 200 million barrels.
Manning
said: “T&T has been the graveyard of many
a geologists who have lost their well earned reputation
here.”
Block
3(a) is operated by BHP Billiton, which has a 25.5
per cent interest in the field. Co-venturers include
Talisman (Trinidad Block 3a) Ltd, and Anadarko Petroleum
Corporation, each with a 25.5 per cent interest;
Petrotrin, which has a 15 per cent interest; and
Total, with an 8.5 per cent interest.
The Trinidad Guardian
Friday 3rd November, 2006
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©2005-2006 Trinidad Publishing Company Limited
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