The much anticipated Juniper gas development project is back on schedule after a series of delays early in project execution. With a production capacity of approximately 590 million standard cubic feet of gas per day, the Juniper project should bring much needed relief to the gas-starved liquefied natural gas (LNG) and petrochemical sectors in 2017. The project, located off the south-east coast of Trinidad, is bpTT’s first subsea field development in the country.
While the project will bring much needed gas to Trinidad in the medium term, in the short term there is a planned outage at the Mahogany Bravo (B) platform during August 2016 to facilitate the tie-in of the Juniper export line. The Mahogany Bravo installation also serves as a hub for the Mahogany Alpha and Savonette platforms which are tied back into this facility. The Juniper platform will also be tied into this Mahogany Hub network.
bpTT has been working with The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (NGC) and other industry stakeholders to minimise the impact on gas supply to downstream during the installation work at Mahogany.
Earlier in March, bpTT also announced that all five subsea trees required for the Juniper project arrived in Trinidad and Tobago. A subsea tree is a complex configuration of valves and sensors installed on the wellhead to monitor and control the flow of hydrocarbons. This is an essential piece of equipment for the Juniper project and each tree weighs approximately 76 tonnes.
Assembled and tested at the OneSubsea fabrication plant in Johor, Malaysia, with components and materials sourced from various locations around the world including Malaysia, Singapore, USA, UK, Ireland, Italy and Germany, these trees are among the largest and heaviest ever built.
After being offloaded at the LABIDCO yard for testing, the trees will move to the offshore location for the bpTT Juniper field. Drilling of the five Juniper subsea wells began in 2015 and was completed in March 2016. The completions activity currently in progress on all five wells will take place by Q4 2016.
The Juniper facility will take gas from the Corallita and Lantana fields located 50 miles off the south-east coast of Trinidad in water depth of approximately 360 feet. Juniper will become bpTT’s 14th offshore production facility in Trinidad.
The Juniper platform is currently being fabricated at the Trinidad Offshore Fabrication Company (TOFCO) yard in La Brea, Trinidad and in the USA.