Oman’s crude oil and condensate production fell 6.2 per cent to 64.39 million barrels in the first quarter of 2007, the official news agency ONA reported.

The average production of crude oil and condensates was 715,400 barrels per day, down from 763,000 bpd for the first quarter of last year, the agency said.
Oman’s crude oil exports declined 10.9 per cent to 56.85 million barrels in the quarter from 63.78 million barrels in the same period last year.
The Gulf Arab state’s natural gas production rose 11.2 per cent in the period to 267.78 million cubic feet from 240.74 mcf, ONA said, quoting official statistics.
Independent producer Oman has been trying to reverse an output decline that began in 2001.
It announced plans last year to spend $10 billion over five years to boost oil and gas output.
Oman produced an estimated 743,000 bpd of total oil liquids in 2006, five per cent down on the previous year and the sixth successive year of decline, the US government’s Energy Information Administration said in a recent report.
The EIA forecast the output decline would continue in 2007 and 2008, by which time output would be 690,000 bpd.
To offset this decline, the EIA noted the Oman government announced plans in April 2006 to invest $10 billion in upstream oil and gas projects over the next five years.
Focus will be on enhanced oil recovery initiatives to improve rates at several of the country’s oilfields, the largest of which is Occidental’s onshore Mukhaizna field where output is expected to increase from 10,000 bpd to 150,000 bpd by 2012.
In its latest Oman Country Analysis Brief, the EIA reported Oman’s 2006 crude oil production averaged 676,000 bpd, seven per cent less than in 2005, while the country also produced 61,000 bpd of lease condensate and 6,000 bpd of natural gas plant liquids.
Domestic oil consumption stood at 64,000 bpd, while the remaining 679,000 bpd was used for exports, the report said, adding other figures show proven oil reserves as of January 2007 were 5.5 billion barrels.
In the natural gas sector, EIA said 2004 production reached 607 billion cubic feet, up more than three-fold since 1999, while the country has proven gas reserves as of January 2007 of 30 trillion cubic feet.
Oman consumed 239 bcf of natural gas in 2004, with LNG exports of 324 bcf. Nearly two-thirds of the LNG exports went to Japan.
Oman also pipes 175 million cubic feet per day of gas to the UAE through two pipelines, however, one of these pipelines will be reversed in 2008 to send 135 million cubic feet per day into Oman.
“Oman’s long-term oil output targets rely heavily upon the success of these and other planned EOR projects,” said EIA.
“The Mukhaizna development plan involves a relatively new EOR process that seeks to use steam flooding to help recover heavy, viscous oil reserves that are not easy to recover using conventional methods. Not only is this costly, the technique uses large amounts of water, which is relatively expensive and scarce in the Arabian Gulf,” it said.