Baay discusses Ortoire block’s ‘game-changing’ potential
Last night, Touchstone Exploration (LSE:TXP) president and chief executive Paul Baay provided a comprehensive update to investors in an exclusive online presentation with ValueTheMarkets.
The update saw Baay highlight the company’s successes in 2018, which included drilling 11 development wells and 28 well recompletions. The work saw the business hit its 2000bopd production target and become profitable at the Plc level. This helped it to become the most active onshore upstream player in Trinidad, the home of its operations.
Excitingly, the presentation also saw Baay provide an update on the forthcoming exploration of Touchstone’s Ortoire exploration block on the east of Trinidad. The company has applied for certificates of environmental compliance for 14 drilling locations at the block and is planning to drill its first well this year.
On this, Baay said: ‘Ortoire has been a long time coming, but it has a chance to be a real game-changer for us. It is a turbidite deposit but old technology previously missed this, and the block’s prospects were viewed as tight and challenging.
‘Developments in technology have meant that virtually half of all the massive global discoveries since Ortoire’s initial exploration have been turbidites. We applied this model to Trinidad, and it became obvious turbidites were present. This has created our Ortoire prospects, and if our model works, it is something that will be a step change for both Touchstone and Trinidad.’
The presentation was followed by a Q&A session, in which Baay took questions from the audience as well as questions submitted to ValueTheMarkets in advance. Many of the questions related to Ortoire, ongoing production growth, and Baay’s thoughts on how conditions in the wider oil market will impact Touchstone.
