Shifting focus: BHP Billiton moves from oil to gas
BHP moves from oil to gas
BHP Billiton Trinidad & Tobago, which has seen its oil production rapidly decline, will move into gas production in the first quarter of 2011, its operations manager said.
"Our oil continues to approach a natural decline in the fields. It will be helped by our ability to produce the gas and sell it to the market place. We do see our projects steering more toward gas than oil in the future," Jon Krome, the company's vice president for operations in Trinidad, said at an energy conference yesterday.
BHP's oil production from its Greater Angostura field plunged from 50,542 barrels per day four years ago to 14,870 bpd last August, Reuters reported.
Krome said BHP Billiton Trinidad & Tobago will have the capacity to produce 280 million cubic feet of gas per day, which will be sold to the state-owned National Gas Company to supply downstream petrochemical companies.
In 2008, BHP Billiton Trinidad & Tobago signed a contract with the company to supply gas from a new gas export platform which is expected to go on-line next year.
The platform is to be built alongside the company's existing Greater Angostura field, off the east coast.
