A heavy oil reserve analysis for Trinidad and Tobago

A heavy oil reserve analysis for Trinidad and Tobago

Previous estimates regarding Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) heavy oil in place (OIP) are expansive, ranging from 2 to 8 billion barrels of oil. Additionally, there is no clear method from the literature indicating how this range was determined. This paper focuses on the creation of a heavy oil invent...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Arabian journal of geosciences Vol. 15; no. 7
Main Authors: Boodlal, Donnie, Alexander, David, John, Ejae, Ramnath, Deborah
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 2022
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Barrels
Classification
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth science
Earth Sciences
Gravity
International standards
Mathematical analysis
Offshore
Oil
Oil and gas fields
Oil fields
Oil reserves
Original Paper
Potential resources
Reserves
Trinidad & Tobago
Heavy oil inventory
Oil in place
Oil reserves
Heavy oil
Original oil in place
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Summary:Previous estimates regarding Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) heavy oil in place (OIP) are expansive, ranging from 2 to 8 billion barrels of oil. Additionally, there is no clear method from the literature indicating how this range was determined. This paper focuses on the creation of a heavy oil inventory for T&T that quantifies, characterizes and maps the exact locations of the main heavy oil reserves and the development of a clear methodology for conducting these assessments. Eleven main heavy oil fields were identified, comprising of six onshore fields and five offshore fields. These eleven oil fields were analysed in this paper to provide an accurate measure of T&T heavy oil reserves which includes original oil in place (OOIP) and OIP. In this paper, heavy oil was defined as having an API gravity of ≤ 22.3 ° API. The method used for reserve estimation is the volumetric method coupled with that of cumulative production data in order to determine remaining OIP. A five-step method was used for developing the heavy oil inventory, a method fully described in this paper. It was determined that for both onshore and offshore, there exists a total OOIP of 5.52 billion barrels and 5 billion barrels of OIP. An analysis of the cumulative production data for these fields demonstrates that less than 10% of total available heavy oil has been recovered to date. As such, approximately 90% of the total heavy OOIP is still contained in T&T reservoirs. The calculated total for the six major onshore heavy oil fields is 1.42 billion barrels OOIP and 1.15 billion barrels OIP. The calculated total for the five major offshore heavy oil fields is 4.11 billion barrels OOIP and 3.85 billion barrels OIP. This paper also includes static maps, which were created to represent data for the eleven fields. A significant amount of the heavy oil in T&T falls within the 18.1 to 22.3°API range; thus, it is recommended that T&T amends its official heavy oil classification from 18° API gravity to the World Energy Council classification of ≤ 22.3°API, thus aligning T&T with international standards.
ISSN:1866-7511
1866-7538
DOI:10.1007/s12517-022-09923-5