BHP Strikes Oil In Trinidad And Mexico

Australia’s BHP has drilled two additional exploration wells as part of a deepwater drilling campaign offshore Trinidad and Tobago with one discovery made, and one well classified as dry.

BHP said in its operational update for the third quarter published on Thursday that the two wells were located in the Northern licenses and were a part of the company’s Phase 4 deepwater drilling campaign.

According to the company, the Boom-1 well was spud on August 28 and encountered hydrocarbons. Evaluation and analysis of the well are currently ongoing.

The second well, the Carnival-1, was spud on September 30 and reached total depth after the end of the September 2019 quarter. The well was a dry hole.

BHP said that the drilling of the two wells completed the exploration program on the Trinidad and Tobago Northern licenses. Evaluation and development planning studies of the discoveries in the North are ongoing.

Following Carnival-1, the Deepwater Invictus rig will return to the U.S. Gulf of Mexico to complete regulatory abandonment work on Shenzi appraisal and exploration boreholes.

As for the company’s recent operations in Trinidad and Tobago, it is worth reminding that BHP approved $283 million in funding to develop the Ruby offshore project in August. In April, BHP found hydrocarbons in its Bélé-1 exploration well.

In its operational update on Thursday, BHP shared the results of the Trion 3-DEL appraisal well offshore Mexico, which the company spud in July 2019.

The company said it was encouraged by the preliminary results, with the well encountering oil in the reservoirs up-dip from all previous well intersections.

The oil firm further stated that the evaluation and analysis were ongoing, with no further appraisal wells anticipated.

To remind, BHP set aside $256 million for the Trion 3-DEL back in February 2019 following an oil discovery at the Trion field. BHP’s well, which made the discovery, was the first well drilled by an international operator in the Mexican deepwater.

BHP – then BHP Billiton – successfully bid on the Trion field back in 2016 as Mexico’s Pemex was looking for an experienced deepwater player to share costs at the Trion discovery due to its depth and complexity. It has been said that once fully appraised, Trion is expected to be in the top 10 fields discovered in the Gulf of Mexico in the last decade.

BHP holds a 60% interest in the Trion field and the remaining 40% is held by the Mexican company.