In search of black gold

For now, Nariva Swamp may be off-limits, but oil giant Talisman is fine-tuning and pressing ahead with its oil exploration efforts on land. Even as Talisman prepares its Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), which, it hopes, will allow it to conduct a seismic survey in the Nariva Swamp, the company is leaving nothing to chance in the Eastern Block in south Trinidad.

The company is planning to sink TT $150 million into its seismic programme alone. That includes the forests of Rio Claro, an area that borders the Nariva Swamp. Further east in the offshore, Talisman will spend a further US$ 180 million through its involvement with BHP and other partners. “We know that this is a high-risk operation,” says Paul van Rijswijck, managing director of Upstream Operations, a local company hired by Talisman to do the groundwork for the onshore oil exploration. “It’s a one in ten chance that oil is there.”

This exploration is being done in a joint venture partnership with Petrotrin but Talisman carries all the financial risks during the early exploration phase. “It’s a lot of money to put out not knowing if you’re going to find oil,” says van Rijswijck, adding, “Talisman has no idea what the outcome will be.” In its arsenal though is the latest in 3-D seismic, a technology that makes finding structures that might trap oil a lot easier and lowering the risk of expensive exploration wells. Talisman has been in TT since 1996, attracted by geology similar to that of Venezuela and if things go according to plan, the company stands to reap rich rewards along with the other stakeholders.

Seismic field operations are conducted from upstairs an ordinary-looking building, opposite a gas station in Rio Claro. The company occupies the entire floor. On one wall is a huge grid-like map of the Rio Claro environment that in essence, outlines Talisman’s operations, while on another wall is a similar map that pinpoints where the crews are deployed. At peak operations, more than one thousand men will be directed over a vast area from the main operations office. In another room is a geophysics team putting all the pieces together on a computer system to ensure that technical goals are met without damage to property.

It’s one hell of an operation. Every day and like clockwork, maxi-taxis and crew vehicles ferry about 750 workers to an area a few miles away. They then head out in crews to survey, drill and prepare the heavily forested area for data recording, which will begin in April. Mapping the area will be done using explosive charges, something that environmentalists are not too keen on. It is only by using these charges that seismic mapping of the area can be done, says van Rijswijck. The process is tedious. By the time we got to the area, a crew had drilled a 60-ft hole (known as a shot hole) in the ground. An explosive charge, a water-gel we’re told, was then anchored at the bottom of the hole and prepared for detonation. As a precaution, three plugs along with an anchor, are lowered into the hole, making it almost impossible to retrieve. By the time the crew was finished, all that was left was a small muddy area. Van Rijswijck notes that in a few months, the area would revert to its original condition.

If Talisman is allowed to do the seismic survey in Nariva Swamp, this exact procedure will be followed, he adds. Apart from the muddy area, the surrounding area was left untouched. The forest trails are only wide enough to carry equipment. When the charge is set off, van Rijswijck says a small quantity of mud may be ejected from the hole in a few instances. “The impact will be minimal,” he stresses, noting that Talisman is doing everything possible to address environmental concerns. The company has handed out brochures to residents and explained what will take place through the various phases of the project. Asked what the explosion will sound like, Rijswijck likened it to a dull thud from a large bass speaker accompanied by a vibration similar to a loaded dump truck passing on a bumpy road. When detonated, sound waves will be sent into the earth and recorded by surface instruments. Van Rijswijck laments the fact that few people have asked to see what the reality is like on the ground.

The Eastern Block is licenced to Talisman, with Rio Claro being the centre of the survey. The survey reaches west into Tableland, south past the cattle ranch on the Guaya Road to Catshill, north past Churuma and East to the Balata-east Field area. Talisman hopes to complete the survey before the onset of the rainy season in 2003.  Van Rijswijck says the company would like to acquire seismic data over 375 sq km of the block, which includes parts of the Nariva Swamp. But the swamp itself has been the subject of controversy and for a while became a flashpoint for environmentalists. He notes the first CEC that Talisman has obtained encompasses 320 sq km, the area over which current field operations are taking place.

When the EMA denied Talisman access to the Nariva Swamp on the grounds that it was protected, Talisman took the matter to the Environmental Commission (EC). The court upheld Talisman’s appeal and sent Talisman’s application back to the EMA with a view to having an EIA done in the area as prescribed in the environmental legislation. Van Rijswijck stressed that even if Talisman were to get permission to go into the swamp to shoot seismic, there will be no exploration drilling or oilfield development in the swamp whatsoever. “We can,” he says with conviction,” explore and produce oil from beneath the nature reserve.” This, he says, can be done  through long reach wells and without “spudding”  within the sensitive area. He maintains that this is being done in environmentally sensitive areas elsewhere where Talisman currently operates.  He adds that even though oilfield operations take place in several Ramsar sites around the world, Talisman respects the sensitivity of the Nariva Ramsar site.

He acknowledges that finding oil on land carries a high risk, but Talisman says it’s worth a shot. Exxon, they know, spent time  and money in the early nineties in this area and found nothing. “Their seismic work was a 2-D programme carried out throughout southern Trinidad, but ours is a low impact 3-D focused on the Eastern Block,” he explains. Trinidad, he says, is called the “graveyard of geologists” because of such failures and the general complexity found in Trinidadian onshore geology. He is quick to point out, that while they are in the process of collecting data, it was too early to draw any conclusions on oil prospects.