Touchstone Exploration has announced that the Cascadura natural gas and liquids facility has safely delivered first production.
Touchstone has an 80 percent operating working interest in the Cascadura field, which is located on the Ortoire block onshore in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Heritage Petroleum Company Limited holds the remaining 20 percent working interest.
Natural gas and associated liquids production commenced on September 6, 2023 and the company intends to increase gross aggregate natural gas production from the Cascadura-1ST1 and Cascadura Deep-1 wells to 60 MMcf/d (10,000 boe/d) plus associated natural gas liquids over the coming weeks.
Natural gas and associated liquids production from the Company's Cascadura wells is separated at the Cascadura facility on the Cascadura A surface location. The facility operates as a self-contained system, capturing all natural gas from the separators and liquids storage tanks and recycling it back into the system to increase sales volumes. Additionally, the facility sustains its own power requirements through onsite solar systems and natural gas generators and is entirely independent of the Trinidad power grid. The facility has a designed gross production capacity of 200 MMcf/d and 5,000 bbls/d of associated liquids, with a current gross production capacity of 90 MMcf/d and 2,250 bbls/d of associated liquids (17,250 boe/d).
The facility was constructed over the past year and represented approximately 110,000 work hours of local employment using Trinidadian contractors and fabrication facilities. Throughout construction and commissioning, the project recorded no lost time injuries.
Natural gas volumes are transported through a 20-inch pipeline constructed and operated by The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited ("NGC") and sold to NGC pursuant to an Ortoire natural gas sales agreement executed in December 2020. Condensate volumes will be transported via tanker trucks to the Company's Barrackpore liquids sales facility and sold to Heritage pursuant to a Cascadura field liquids sales agreement executed on September 1, 2023.
Paul Baay, President and Chief Executive Officer, said "The commencement of production from Cascadura marks the most significant milestone to date in the Touchstone journey, transitioning us to a majority natural gas weighted production company. Our fixed price natural gas agreement will deliver a significantly increased predictable cashflow stream to be reinvested in the future development of our extensive Trinidad asset base. Cascadura represents the second producing area on our Ortoire block, where we have multiple defined development prospects, alongside a significant pipeline of long-term exploration prospects. We would like to thank our partners and contractors for their support and attention to safety during the facility construction and commissioning process. Our team will now focus on optimizing Cascadura production and planning a future drilling program to fill our existing Coho and Cascadura facilities."