Adnoc has successfully embarked on a number of schemes to assess undiscovered oil reserves and optimise hydrocarbon recovery from existing fields. During the past three decades, Adnoc has expanded its business activities, enhanced its competitive position and so managed to become one of the world's leading oil companies with substantial business interests in upstream and downstream activities, including transportation, shipping, marketing and distribution.
Adnoc's efforts in the exploration and production field have concentrated on assessing undiscovered reserves and optimising hydrocarbon recovery by improving reservoir management, and practicing environmental control.
Major oil development programmes have been implemented, mainly in existing fields to expand production capacities to achieve targets of the 25-year plateau production rates.
The optimisation of development of the existing fields originally aimed at halting the production rate decline as well as deriving cost advantages by improving use of the existing facilities and infrastructure and by applying the most advanced drilling technologies.
These technologies, which are used in drilling and completion of multilateral wells etc, increased production and helped in proper reservoir management, while taking all the precautions for environmental protection by minimising emissions and discharges.
In the last few years significant achievements have been made in the expansion of the development of gasfields to meet increased demand from industry gas users and gas injection requirements in order to enhance the oil and condensate recovery from the producing fields.
Onshore
Oil and gas development project activities have continued at peak levels in onshore areas.
Onshore projects recently completed include Bab Thamama ''C'' & ''F'' gas gathering and injection network project, the new 36" Main Oil Pipeline Project and Water Injection Upgrade Project for Bu Hasa and Sahil fields.
Oilfields development
The water injection upgrade project for Bu Hasa and Sahil fields was completed in 1996.
The project involved the extension and upgrade of existing water injection facilities at Bu Hasa and construction of the new facilities at Sahil to achieve additional water injection capacity.
The Sahil full field development project to increase oil production from Thamama reservoirs was implemented in two phases to achieve a production level of 75,000 barrels per day (bpd). The first phase to achieve a production capacity of 55,000 bpd was completed in 1997, with the second phase, to achieve 75,000 bpd output, forecast to be complete by 2004.
In the North East Abu Dhabi (Al Dabb'iya and Rumaitha/Shanayel) fields, the integrated surface and subsurface plan for facility upgrading was completed in 1998.
Adco's new 36", 115 km Main Oil Line from Habshan to Jebel Dhanna was completed in 1997. The objective of this project was to supplement the existing onshore Main Oil Lines system, ensure ultimate system continuity, and handle the maximum output of Adco fields while retaining the integrity of the system.
The projects currently under implementation are as follows:
A) Adco production capacity increase to 1.4 million bpd.
I) Bab Development
The objective of the project is to increase Adco's sustainable crude oil production from Thamama ''B'' by 100,000 bpd and expand the existing Bab facilities' capacity to handle 350,000 bpd. In addition, the gas injection capacity will be increased from 280 to 400 million cu ft per day.
The expected completion date is in the fourth quarter of 2005.
II) North East Abu Dhabi (NEAD) Phase -1
The objective of the project is to inject 170 million cu ft per day and to produce a total sustainable oil production of 110,000 bpd (being 70,000 bpd and 40,000 bpd from Al Dabbi'ya and Rumaitha/ Shanayel fields respectively.
The expected completion date is in the fourth quarter of 2005.
III) Bu Hasa/Huwaila
This project will see the development of the Huwaila field in order to produce 10,000 bpd. It will also see the development of units G and F + D extension to produce an additional 50,000 bpd
B) Bu Hasa Production Facilities Upgrade
The project consists of the following:
The project completion date is expected during the fourth quarter of 2005
Offshore
In the offshore area, the development process and enhancement of production has continued as planned in recent years to maximise the utilisation of oil reservoirs and the existing oil accumulation there.
Currently, offshore operations utilise 12 self-contained drilling rigs for offshore drilling, work over and exploration operations including nine rigs owned by the National Drilling Company (NDC), which is a 100 per cent Adnoc affiliate.
Oil development
In the last few years, oil production capacities of the offshore Lower Zakum and Umm Shaif fields have been enhanced by Adma-Opco through development drilling and additional producers and injectors.
Major development projects by Adma-Opco have been Umm Shaif Arab-D & C reservoirs and Zakum Thammama V development. Umm Shaif Crestal Pilot Gas Injection Project was also implemented while Zakum gas injection pilot, which involves the injection of 100 million cu ft per day of GGII associated gas into Lower Zakum and 100 million cu ft per day into Upper Zakum, is under commissioning.
The ongoing offshore projects are Zakum Crestal Gas injection for injection of 200 million cu ft per day of Umm Shaif Khuff gas into Zakum field-Thamama reservoirs to enhance oil recovery, which is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2004, and Umm Shaif Crestal Gas Injection Project for installing facilities and wells for the auto-injection of 600 million cu ft of Umm Shaif Khuff gas into Arab D & C reservoirs to enhance oil production, which is expected to be completed by 2006.
Also one of the major achievements of the last few years has been the substantial increase in oil production capacity by Zadco in the Upper Zakum field, which was achieved through development drilling of additional re-infill wells and expansion of the facilities.
The oil production, water injection and power generation facilities were expanded under the Upper Zakum Expansion Project to meet requirements of enhanced production rate. Similarly, oil production and water injection facilities at North and South satellites were upgraded.
In Satah field, water injection facilities were installed and commissioned during 1997. Water for injection is supplied via a 10-inch water pipeline from a water injection plant at Arzanah Island.
