After months of delay, the Trinidad Onshore Compression (TROC) project has finally received a green light from all of the Atlantic shareholders and the Government of Trinidad and Tobago. This long anticipated project promises to bring on-stream an additional 200 million standard cubic feet of gas per day by early 2017. The completion of this project, along with the bpTT Juniper and EOG Resources/ bpTT Sercan project, are expected to bring some temporary relief to the liquefied natural gas (LNG) and petrochemical sectors, which have suffered from serious shortfalls in gas supply over recent years, though additional new gas projects will be needed to offset continued falling production from existing fields in subsequent years.
The final sanctioning of this project has been a long and drawn-out process as it has involved multiple negotiations and agreements amongst a number of different operators and other stakeholders, despite the fact the project is being funded in full by bpTT. Ownership of the asset will remain with bpTT, though the facility will be operated by Atlantic.
The TROC project involves the installation of an additional inlet compressor at Atlantic’s Point Fortin LNG plant. The addition of this compressor will decrease the pressure in the pipelines bringing gas from the east coast offshore gas fields to the Atlantic facility. Decreasing pipeline pressure will allow more gas to flow into the system from low-pressure wells in bpTT’s existing acreage in the Columbus Basin and therefore increase overall gas production. Additional upgrades will be made to bpTT’s upstream facilities, as well as those of other companies, to accommodate operations of the new onshore compressor.
According to bpTT Regional President Norman Christie, “The TROC project is another demonstration of bpTT’s long-term commitment to Trinidad and Tobago. It is also a clear example of bpTT, the government and many key players in the oil and gas industry cooperating to improve production and revenue for Trinidad and Tobago. The investment by bpTT has been significant and will result in increased gas accessibility from our offshore fields to help alleviate the current gas supply shortfalls. We are pleased that the project is progressing and look forward to the start-up of the compressor in early 2017.”
Despite the fact that the project only received sanction in late July 2016, significant construction work and the procurement and delivery of equipment for TROC actually took place prior to the final sign-off. With project sanction, construction and installation work can now accelerate. The mechanical completion and commissioning of the TROC compressor at Atlantic will take place over the next few months and start-up is planned for early 2017.