In southern offshore Trinidad, BHP have had modest encouragement the last few years in increasing water depths with two gas condensate discoveries, but have come up unsuccessful in their most recent deepwater attempt with an additional deeper oil target.
Map showing location of the deepwater Broadside-1 well, offshore Trinidad.
Broadside-1, spudded in September on TTDAA 3 Block in over 1,800m water, targeting gas and deeper oil in Miocene sands, met with disappointing results after initial drilling difficulties and was finally plugged and abandoned as a dry well. BHP had touted recently some petroleum system similarities with the ExxonMobil major discoveries some 300 km to the southeast in Guyana. In recent years in the southern deepwater BHP have drilled the Le Clerc and Victoria gas discoveries and the dry hole Conception-1, all somewhat inboard on TTDAA 5. Also, BHP have drilled four gas discoveries and one dry hole in the north deepwater, but no announcements of commerciality or development plans have been forthcoming.
