10 years more for T&T gas proven gas reserves: Report

A report on Trinidad and Tobago's natural gas reserves by the US-based Ryder Scott Company indicates that the country now has 10 years of gas left in its proven reserves.

The report shows that since 2000, proven natural gas reserves have declined from 19.7 billion cubic feet (bcf) to 15.4 bcf in 2008. In fact it says for 2009 reserves were down to 14.4 bcf and probable reserves stood at 7.8 bcf and possible were 5.9 bcf of gas.

Energy Minister Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan is not surprised. "We anticipated these results," she said. "You would have heard us speaking to the issues many times. The important issue is how we address it and the plans going forward—the actions, the initiatives to be taken to address that situation,” she added.

The minister said one approach to dealing with the low reserves is to move aggressively with exploration.

“We are putting a programme in place to ensure that there is continuous exploration activity,” she said noting that to satisfy the natural gas demand, Trinidad and Tobago had been tapping the reserves at a rate of 1.4 trillion cubic feet yearly.

"Our goal is 100 per cent replacement of annual gas production," the Energy Minister said, adding to achieve this, the government would encourage the necessary exploration, appraisal and development drilling in order to move resources into the reserve categories.

“There must be significant and sustained exploration to activity to maintain the reserve base," she said. The minister added that the stable reserve base outlined audit proves the country is on the right track.

Larry McHalffney, senior petroleum engineer with the Texas-based company, described the situation as bleak. However he said the country has maintained a "steady, stable reserve base".

According to seepersad-Bachan, "This demonstrates that although our extraction rate has increased, we have been able to transfer exploration resources to the reserves category."

She said the new People's Partnership government is working on the problem by opening up the competitive bid round for both the shallow and deep-water exploration.

She explained that this policy has attracted at least eight companies for the bidding, which ends in August. Seepersad-Bachan hopes that the process would lead to product-sharing contracts and that the contracts should be awarded by December.