BHP Venture May Expand Trinidad Field for Natural Gas

By Angela Macdonald-Smith

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- BHP Billiton Ltd. and its partners in the Greater Angostura oil and gas field in Trinidad & Tobago may spend about $400 million expanding the project to include gas production after signing a contract for the sale of the fuel.

The expansion will involve the construction of a new export platform with capacity of 280 million cubic feet a day of gas that is expected to start operating in the first half of 2011, Melbourne-based BHP Billiton said in an e-mailed statement. The fuel will be sold to National Gas Company of Trinidad & Tobago Ltd., it said.

BHP, Australia's biggest oil and gas producer, is forecasting 10 percent annual compound growth in oil and gas output through to the 2011 financial year as new projects start operating. It began producing oil at Angostura, in which Total SA and Talisman Energy Inc. own stakes, in January 2005.

``The development of this second phase will help to grow the business base for BHP Billiton in Trinidad & Tobago,'' Vincent Pereira, president of the company's local operations, said in the statement, dated Sept. 16.


BHP, which owns 45 percent of the venture, will spend $180 million on the expansion, which includes modifications to existing Angostura production systems and the installation of new gas transmission lines.

The Angostura expansion is still in the feasibility study stage, Samantha Evans, a Melbourne-based spokeswoman at BHP, said in an e-mail. She couldn't say how the gas would be used.

Sales to U.S.

National Gas Company of Trinidad & Tobago will take delivery of the gas at the new platform and will transport it into the proposed 36-inch diameter Northeastern Offshore pipeline and the 12-inch diameter Tobago pipeline, BHP said. The company in February last year said it agreed on the terms for the purchase of 220 million cubic feet a day of gas from the Greater Angostura venture for about 11 years.

Paris-based Total owns 30 percent of Angostura and Talisman, based in Calgary, 25 percent.

Trinidad & Tobago, the largest liquefied natural gas supplier to the U.S., also uses gas for the production of methanol, ammonia and steel. The government is giving priority to using gas to drive economic development as it seeks to achieve the status of a developed country by 2020.

LNG is natural gas that has been chilled to liquid form, reducing it to one-six-hundredth of its original volume at minus 161 degrees Celsius (minus 259 Fahrenheit), for transportation by ship to destinations not connected by pipeline. On arrival, it's turned back into gas for distribution to power plants, factories and households.

To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Macdonald-Smith in Sydney at amacdonaldsm@bloomberg.net