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BP will today announce production has started on a new gasfield in Trinidad, the second major project in the past two months, as it tries to boost its oil and gas production to calm the nerves of frustrated investors.
The UK-listed energy major pledged at the end of February to pivot back to its core oil and gas business and slash its spending on renewable energy in a bid to revive its faltering share price.
It also promised investors it would bring 10 major projects online in the next two years, adding a total of 250,000 barrels of oil and gas per day to its current production of 2.4mn b/d.
So far, investors have reserved their judgment. BP’s share price has been roughly flat since chief executive Murray Auchincloss presented his new strategy.
Meanwhile, the company has embarked on a flurry of activity to prove its case. Midway through February it said production had started on phase 2 of its Raven field in Egypt, where it plans to pump 200mn cubic feet of gas per day (mcf/d), and on Tuesday BP will announce that the Cypre field in Trinidad and Tobago has come online, which should produce 250mcf/d.
In order to expand its production rapidly, BP has focused on cheap and quick wins — fields that can be connected, or tied back, to existing production facilities.
William Lin, BP’s head of gas, told analysts at the end of February that BP plans to drill about 40 new wells in the next three years, and a number of them “could be tied back to fill existing infrastructure, making cycle time to start up much shorter”.
BP has been producing oil and gas in Trinidad since the early 1970s, but is now able to extract more from existing prospects using modern technology.
Trinidad also already has the facilities to liquefy the gas into LNG.
David Campbell, the president of BP Trinidad, said Cypre was part of the company’s “strategy to maximise production” while “using existing infrastructure”.
As part of a promise to sell $20bn of its assets in the next two years, BP said last month that it would sell a $1bn stake in the 1,100-mile Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline that runs from Azerbaijan to Europe through Turkey, and that it would sell more than 260 petrol stations in Austria, as well as its electric vehicle charging assets.
