Off the North Coast of Tobago lies the Tobago Trough, a Tertiary basin where high quality shallow marine sandstones have been found to reservoir giant gas reserves. Exploration and appraisal in the late 1990’s brought the North Coast Marine Area (NCMA) gas fields (Hibiscus, Poincettia and Chaconia) into production, with gas being exported via Trinidad and Tobago’s Atlantic LNG infrastructure. Subsequent development of the shore-face sand reservoirs has been tremendously successful, however very little exploration in the Tobago Trough has been undertaken to back-fill these now produced reserves. 2D seismic in this basin indicates that additional sequence stratigraphically controlled shoreface, channels and pro-delta fans lie in stratigraphic and structural stacked traps in the Tobago Trough, however, 3D data is required to delineate and explore for these targets.
The strategy of exploring this area to provide future development options that will feed into Trinidad and Tobago’s LNG infrastructure is to increase LNG production into the growing global market where LNG provides tactical and strategic support to energy security. Additionally, LNG gas that replaces the use of coal for power generation is critical to global low carbon energy sustainability initiatives. Searcher is therefore leading the hunt for low-carbon energy in Trinidad and Tobago by seeking new gas resources close to the existing LNG hub.
Mr. Alan Hopping, Searcher’s GM of Business Development, said “Modern 3D seismic acquired in the Tobago Trough will offer such a security of assessment that the exploration of the prospectivity can be undertaken in a planned and considered manner. This will maximize investment efficiency and ensure production is optimized within the LNG export-infrastructure.” The LNG trains comprising the Atlantic LNG facility have a production capacity of 15 mtpa of LNG. “The opportunity to explore shallow targets in Tertiary Deltas for seismically visible gas is a rare and exciting opportunity today, which we are happy to pursue with the aid and support of the authorities in Trinidad and Tobago.” added Mr. Hopping.
Searcher’s acquisition is planned as a 6,500 km² wide-tow long streamer acquisition and processed through to Pre Stack Depth Migration. The acquisition will commence as soon as an environmental impact assessment is complete and is currently scheduled for Q1 2023. Data will be available in Q4 2023 in time for the next Deep Water Licensing Round.
