BPTT to spend $600 million on Serrette gas production

Curtis Williams
OGJ Correspondent

PORT OF SPAIN, May 3 -- BP Trinidad & Tobago LLC (BPTT) said it will spend $600 million on a project to produce natural gas from its Serrette platform on the northern section of its Columbus basin acreage.

In late April, BPTT’s Serrette platform was installed in 278 ft of water off the east coast of Trinidad and Tobago about 51 km north of its Mango development, which is thought to contain more than 3 tcf of gas.

The platform represents the first development in the northern area of BPTT’s Columbus basin acreage and is equipped for future development opportunities in the area.

Serrette is the company’s 13th offshore production platform and the fifth of its kind, designed and constructed in Trinidad and Tobago.

The Serrette project was sanctioned in May 2009, has a design capacity of 1 bcfd of gas, and will deliver a peak production of 500 MMscfd. The platform will be a normally unmanned installation, much like its predecessors, and will tie into the Cassia B platform via a preinstalled connection at the Mango platform.

Five development wells are expected to be drilled, and the gas will go to BPTT’s national grid and LNG operations. Drilling is expected to commence in the fourth quarter, and production is planned for the first quarter of 2011.

Fluor-Summit based in Trinidad was responsible for the engineering design and the platform was built by the Trinidad Offshore Fabricators Co. (TOFCO) in La Brea, Trinidad.

The jacket and topsides were installed by Heerema Marine Contractors’ “HLV Balder.” The topsides weighed 1,081 tonnes while the jacket weighed 1,943 tonnes.

BPTT is the largest shareholder in Atlantic LNG, which is the largest exporter of LNG to the US.