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Adco to Increase Production
Capacity to 1.8m bpd by 2017

The first phase of the expansion plan is expected to be complete by 2012 and this will yield an additional capacity of 213 million bpd, the General Manager of ADCO, Abdul Munim Saif Al Kindy told reporters on Monday on the sidelines of the ‘Innovative Development Solutions for Marginal Fields’ forum.

He said the first phase of the new oil production capacity would come from the fields, Bab, Asab, Shah, Qusahwira (South East), the North East fields ( Al Dabb’iya and Rumaitha/Shanayel) and Bida Al Qemzan.

The development cost of Phase I project for Bab field is around $1.5 billion and for Qusahwira (South East) is $ 1 billion. They have already been tendered while contracts for the development of three of the remaining fields will be announced within a couple of weeks, Al Kindy said.

The phase II of the expansion, aimed to add production capacity of 70 million bpd and this is expected to be completed by 2014. The new capacity in this phase will be added from Bab, Asab and North East (Al Dabb’iya and Rumaitha /Shanayel) fields.

Another 142 million bpd capacity will be added in the third phase of the expansion plan expected to complete by 2017, Al Kindy said. The additional capacity in this phase will come from Bab, Qusahwira, North East (Al Dabb’iya and Rumaitha /Shanayel) and Mender (South East) fields, he added.

According to the ADCO official, preliminary assessments indicate that investments in marginal fields could add as much as 250,000 bpd to the UAE’s current production. The Marginal fields group is composed of more than seven fields and more than
 twenty reservoirs.

The ADCO was planning to develop these fields as part of short and long term plans to sustain the targeted production of 1.8 million bpd, in addition to enhance oil recovery from existing fields. “Some of the existing fields may have to be taken out of production because of economic and technological considerations and the tapping of marginal fields will compensate for that dip in production,” he explained. “But we will have to anyway access oil from these marginal and tight fields in order to meet the growing demand for oil all over the world,” Al Kindy said.

At the current levels of technological capabilities of ADCO, Unit Technical Cost (UTC) or the cost of producing one barrel of oil is above $10 for marginal fields. This is much higher than the cost of producing oil from normal wells. “We are exploring the possibility of reducing the cost to the maximum extent by adopting advanced technologies,” he said.

Innovation is critical in being able to tap into the more difficult oil in tight reservoirs as well as the oil to be captured from small and remote 
fields, he said.

The three-day Forum which has brought together more than 140 participants, including representatives from oil majors BP, Shell, TOTAL, Exxon Mobil and Partex, is discussing the challenges of developing and maximizing output of marginal and remote fields in the UAE. 


ramavarman@khaleejtimes.com