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BAPCO
Small nation,
big ambition Oil Review hears from Yahya Al Ansari, manager of Exploration at BAPCO, about the NOC’s groundbreaking exploration initiatives. AHRAIN’S OIL AND gas industry may be modest in comparison to many of its neighbours. But what it lacks in resources, it more than makes up for in the bold and innovative approach of its national oil company, BAPCO. Indeed, BAPCO’s plans for the exploitation of unconventional oil deposits offshore could make it something of a pioneer for the whole region. “BAPCO is going to be the first to target unconventional oil offshore, and I am proud that BAPCO and NOGA (National Oil & Gas Authority) have the courage to take such a step,” says Al Ansari. “We are confident that we’ll be successful in terms of discovery, and we have done everything possible to bring the project to the operational level – we’ve done all the studies and analysis utilising the acquired data. And as of today we have platforms in the location. The project includes drilling and fracking – which is uncommon offshore – so it’s a big challenge. It’s a very exciting new project for us so we are looking forward to seeing it up and running and to getting the results.”
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BAPCO is going to be the first to target unconventional oil offshore.” Other ongoing projects include an onshore drilling campaign for exploration targeting the flanks of the mature Awali (Bahrain) field, going as far as some of the islands around Bahrain island. The Awali field, the Kingdom’s major producing field, reached peak production of 79,000 bpd in 1970, declining to around 32,000 bpd by 2009, although BAPCO has been taking active steps in recent years to add to the reserves. “Another big project is the Pre-Khuff gas project,” says Al Ansari. “A lot of work was done on this some time ago, and more recently a deep well was drilled by OXY under an Exploration and Production Sharing Agreement (EPSA )to target the Pre-Khuff potential. We have seen great potential for gas in that section, so we are proceeding with more work to appraise what we have seen from the deep well. The interesting part of the project is that we have different zones in that section, some of which are ready for development, and others have high potential that need appraisal work – we know there is gas there, we just need to appraise that resource. In addition, there’s a huge section still there waiting to be explored. “We are currently evaluating the options for undertaking this project, whether under EPSA agreements with IOCs, or under service agreements with service companies, or by ourselves.” BAPCO’s exploration strategy, Al Ansari explains, has a two-fold approach. “We look at the technical risk versus reward, and where it is
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Issue 2 2017
Yahya Al Ansari, manager of Exploration at BAPCO
a challenging project, we look to invite another party to share the risk with us, as for example under EPSA agreements, which we have used recently with Occidental and companies like Petronas and Chevron in the past, where the IOCs share the cost and the risk with us. This is one part of the strategy. The other part of the strategy is to undertake projects in-house, wherever BAPCO as the national oil company can take the risk. In between, we work on adding value on all the prospective areas, which helps us with both arms of the strategy, whether promoting for IOCs or for development in-house. This in general is our approach in exploration. There are various other types of risk sharing or investment sharing, such as development and production sharing agreements (DPSAs), which we also used recently with Occidental. Here we are not sharing risk, because it is a well known field, but we are looking for technology transfer and experience