BP to invest $15 billion to develop Oman tight gas
BP’s Khazzan tight gas project in Block 61 is one of the company’s top five upstream projects globally. BP’s Khazzan project is also the first and largest of its kind in the Middle East.
In January 2007 BP signed a major exploration and production sharing agreement with the Government of Oman for the appraisal and development of Block 61 and the Khazzan and Makarem gas fields.
The agreement covers an area of some 2,800 km² in central Oman, which contains a number of tight gas reservoirs which were first discovered in the 1990s.
Drilling commenced in September 2008. Then, in March 2011 BP Oman achieved a major milestone with the first gas export from the Extended Well Test project delivered to the government-owned gas plant at Saih Rawl.
The development of the tight gas reservoirs is a significant technical challenge owing to the low porosity of the reservoir rock.
BP is applying innovative technology to unlock this tight gas, drilling horizontal wells and using hydraulic fracturing technologies to force cracks in the rock to encourage flow.
BP Oman has announced in Muscat to award several contracts for the appraisal of the Khazzan & Makarem gas fields in Oman’s Block 61.
The contracts include those for:
– Seismic acquisition services to US’ Global Geophysical Services
– Seismic reprocessing to Cairo-based PGS Data Processing ME
– Select stage engineering to Worley Parsons Oman, including the evaluation of options for the appraisal phase of early production of the Khazzan & Makarem gas fields.
– Drilling rigs to Oman-based Dalma Energy & Co LLC to supply two rigs, with drilling planned to commence by the end of 2008
The contracts awarded by BP mark the beginning of a multi-year appraisal programme to understand the nature of the reservoirs which contain difficult to extract tight gas located at a depth of 4,500-5,000 metres
The plan for 2012 is to drill more horizontal wells. That is the way tight gas production evolved in North America which enable multiple fractures.
The tight gas production needs a lot of wells to be developed, because the flow rates of individual wells are quite low.
Water treatment: a key package of the whole project
Fracturing needs to use a lot of water which can be obtained from shallow, saline aquifers.
This non-potable water is desalinated in using a reverse osmosis plant and adding various chemicals to make the gels that hold open the fractures.
In a potential full field development at Khazzan, more than 300 wells will be producing waste water.
The plan is to drill disposal wells to re-inject the water back into the deep subsurface.
Water management is going to be one of the big issues and something that will require significant capital expenditure in terms of having to desalinate water and dispose of that water once we pump it back.
As a greenfield development, this tight gas project has to bear in addition the capital expenditure of the entire associated infrastructure, including pipelines, the gas processing plant, roads, camps, offsites & utilities.
That makes this initial development to look relatively expensive, but Oman needs this gas. BP Khazzan & Makarem is one of the few options available to the country for new gas supply on a significant scale.
The discussions have begun on the commercial terms with the government, they are expected to be completed by 2013, with 1.2 billion cf/d of processed gas being produced towards the end of 2016.
WorleyParsons working on the pre-FEED
Since WorleyParsosn is working on the pre-FEED, the priority is given to the accommodation of the working area to help the construction to begin in 2013.
The engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) should include eight packages:
– Central Process Facilities
– A 1.2 billion cf/d gas processing plant
– Fracturing equipment
– Well-testing facilities
– Waste water treatment facilities
– 500 km flowlines
– 100 km export pipeline
– Infrastructures
BP expects to issue the call for tender of the EPC contracts soon, on first half of 2012, in order to work on the technical and commercial offers by the end of 2012.
