Cascadura delivers first gas production

Touchstone Exploration Inc – Canadian-based energy company – announced a significant milestone as the Cascadura natural gas and liquids facility delivered its first gas production.

Touchstone has an 80 per cent operating working interest and the Heritage Petroleum Company Ltd has the remaining 20 per cent in the Cascadura field, on the Ortoire block onshore.

In a release on Thursday, Touchstone said natural gas and associated liquids production started on September 6 and the company intends to increase gross aggregate natural gas production from the Cascadura-1ST1 and Cascadura Deep-1 wells to 60 MMcf/d plus associated natural gas liquids over the coming weeks.

Paul Baay, president and CEO of Touchstone, said: “The commencement of production from Cascadura marks the most significant milestone to date in the Touchstone journey, transitioning us to a majority natural gas weighted production company. Our fixed-price natural-gas agreement will deliver a significantly increased predictable cashflow stream to be reinvested in the future development of our extensive Trinidad asset base.”

Baay added that Cascadura represents the second producing area on the Ortoire block, where the company has multiple defined development prospects, alongside a significant pipeline of long-term exploration prospects.

Touchstone said the facility operates as a self-contained system, capturing all natural gas from the separators and liquids storage tanks and recycling it back into the system to increase sales volumes. Additionally, it sustains its own power requirements through onsite solar systems and natural gas generators and is entirely independent of the Trinidad and Tobago power grid.

“The facility has a designed gross production capacity of 200 MMcf/d and 5,000 bbls/d of associated liquids, with a current gross production capacity of 90 MMcf/d and 2,250 bbls/d of associated liquids (17,250 boe/d),” Touchstone said.

The facility – which was constructed over the past year – represents approximately 110,000 work hours of local employment using TT contractors and fabrication facilities.

Touchstone said natural gas volumes are transported through a 20-inch pipeline constructed and operated by NGC and sold under an Ortoire natural-gas sales agreement executed in December 2020. Condensate volumes will be transported via tanker trucks to the company's Barrackpore liquids sales facility and sold to Heritage in accordance with a Cascadura field liquids sales agreement of September 1.

Baay said the company will now focus on optimising Cascadura production and plan a future drilling programme to fill the existing Coho and Cascadura facilities.