By Stanley Ugagbe
In a development that has been adjudged a significant discovery which exceeded expectations, Calgary-based Touchstone Exploration Inc. said it has unearthed onshore oil in Trinidad and Tobago.
The development as disclosed to newsmen was made in Touchstone’s Cascadura-1ST1 well on the Ortoire exploration block.
Touchstone President and CEO Paul Baay in a statement said “The well results far exceed any pre-drill expectations, this well is not only a significant discovery and milestone for Touchstone, but we believe it also establishes a new development stage for onshore drilling in Trinidad”.
The President went further to state that “In the new year, we expect to test each zone independently in order to better understand the economic potential of the prospective oil sands, and if the findings are positive, it will set up an expansive development drilling programme in the area.”
According to him, Cascadura’s logs indicated significant prospective oil pay – a reservoir or portion of a reservoir that contains economically producible hydrocarbons – of 1,037 feet.
Information available to newsmen have it that the company expects to complete and test the Cascadura-1ST1 well in the first quarter of next year.
Also, Touchstone Exploration CEO averred he is ‘taken by surprise’ by the scale of the oil find on its Ortoire block
Cascadura is a joint project of Touchstone, which has an 80 percent working interest, and the formed state-owned, emerging oil and gas company, Heritage Petroleum, which has 20 percent.
According to reports, it is the second prospect of four on the Ortoire block, the first being the Coho-1 well. The absolute flow rate of Coho-1 was 46 million cubic feet a day or the equivalent of 7,671 barrels of oil, but after modelling Coho-1, Touchstone expects the initial production rates to be in the order of 10-12 million standard cubic feet a day – 1,667 to 2,000 barrels of oil equivalent.
Reports have it that the Canadian company has production assets across 10 licence blocks in Trinidad, including 208 well locations over 7,910 acres.
