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Billiton Trinidad moving from oil to gas business

BHP Billiton, operator of the Angostura development, currently produces
25,000 barrels of oil per day and expects to begin gas production by 2010.

PORT SPAIN
Petroleumworldtt.com 02 19 2010

BHP Billiton Trinidad and Tobago (BLT.L), which has seen its oil production rapidly decline, will move into gas production in the first quarter of 2011, its operations manager said.

"Our oil continues to approach a natural decline in the fields. It will be helped by our ability to produce the gas and sell it to the market place. We do see our projects steering more toward gas than oil in the future," Jon Krome, the company's vice president for operations in Trinidad, said at an energy conference on Tuesday.

BHP's oil production from its Greater Angostura field plunged from 50,542 barrels per day (bpd) four years ago to 14,870 bpd last August.

Krome said BHP Billiton Trinidad and Tobago will have the capacity to produce 280 million cubic feet of gas per day, which will be sold to the state-owned National Gas Company to supply downstream petrochemical companies.

In 2008, BHP Billiton Trinidad and Tobago signed a contract with the company to supply gas from a new gas export platform which is expected to go on-line next year. The platform is to be built alongside the company's existing Greater Angostura field, off the east coast.

Story by Linda Hutchinson-Jafar from Reuters

Reuters
Wed Jan 27, 2010 4:17pm GMT

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