• Home
• /
• Business

Most of PDO's production to come from wells not yet drilled

MUSCAT - Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), which is increasingly relying on waterflooding and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies to sustain long-term output levels, estimates more than half of its oil production to come from wells that are not yet drilled and production facilities that are not yet built by the end of 2010.

"In fact, throughout that entire decade beginning with 2010, we will have to be completing nearly one major field-development project per year," Managing Director John Malcolm said here yesterday .

PDO accounts for 90 per cent of the Sultanate's crude oil production and nearly all of its natural-gas supply. Its oil output last year averaged 590,000 barrels a day (b/d), and the target set for 2007 is between 560,000 and 570,000 b/d.

"In terms of crude-oil production, our performance during last year was within our target range of between 580 and 600 thousand barrels a day, with average oil production for the year at 589 thousand barrels a day.

"Hence, this is the fourth year in a row that we — for all intentions and purposes — have met our oil-production target," Malcolm said. He was making a presentation on the company's performance in 2006 and outlining future plans.

Malcolm said the next five years would see significant investment in EOR with the benefits beginning to show in the post-2011 period. "A third of our production will come from EOR in the next 10 years," he said. Oman's oil and gas minister recently said that he expected the country's oil output to reach one million barrels per day by 2012.

Turning to gas, Malcolm noted its increasing importance and the sizeable growth in both gas and condensate output over the last six years. "By the end of 2006, our gas and condensate production was equivalent to 430,000 barrels of oil a day, and it is set to continue growing until the end of the decade," he said.