OMAN’S state-led oil group Petroleum Development Oman is confident it will continue finding sufficient new oil reserves to maintain crude output at roughly 550,000 bpd in the coming years, a senior company executive says.
“Most of the reserves brought on stream to replace previous production are coming from new discoveries,” says Suleiman Al Mantheri, external affairs manager of the government-led consortium, which also includes Shell, Total and Partex.
In a report, PDO says it is planning a multi-year appraisal programme to define the extent and distribution of untapped crude in still prospective areas of its decades-old onshore concession in Oman, which accounts for about 70 per cent of the country’s oil output.
Most of those resources are likely to be found in so-called unconventional deposits which can only be economically produced with the help of recently developed oil field technology.
“For more than half a century, PDO’s exploration teams have been looking for oil and gas in the company’s concession area, known as block 6. In the process PDO has discovered more than 120 commercial oil and gas fields, and we believe that there is still potential for further significant discoveries,” the company says.
PDO says it made three oil discoveries and a gas discovery in 2011, accounting for half its total for the past six years.
The oil strikes included two in the greater Lekhwair area in the northeast of block 6 and one in the south of Oman. The gas discovery was in the north of PDO’s concession area, near two previous gas finds disclosed in 2010 and 2011.
The successful Lekhwair exploration wells have already been connected to local PDO production facilities after they produced a combined 2,600 bpd of crude in early tests.
In the south, PDO’s Sakhiya-1 exploration well flowed over 1,800 bpd during production testing. “The eventual recoverable volumes from the field are expected to be over 35 million barrels of oil,” the company says.
Significantly, the oil was trapped in porous carbonate rock between two impermeable salt layers, representing prospective geological stratigraphy in the area that had not previously been recognised for its oil-bearing potential. Further discoveries of the same type are possible.
Gas flowed to the surface under its own pressure during tests of the successful Rakbiha-1 gas exploration well, PDO said. An appraisal well is planned for 2012 to assess reservoir distribution and commerciality.
The well was one of four the group has drilled in the area targeting unconventional reserves.
“Overall, these discoveries of both oil and gas come from a variety of reservoirs and depths, demonstrating the significant potential that continues to be available in the area. As a result, PDO will continue its extensive efforts to find both new oil and gas fields,” the company says.
