Hamed Ibrahim:16 july
5/8/09
15:34
Page 54
COMPANY FOCUS
Behind the scenes at Egypt’s largest independent oil company.
W
hen it comes to PICO International Petroleum (PIP) size matters, according to the firm’s Head of Exploration Hamed Ibrahim, who says the company’s emergence as Egypt’s leading private oil company is proof that success can come in small packages. Despite only having been set up in 1989, today PIP has grown to become the third largest producer in Egypt’s Gulf of Suez region. Over the past decade it has focused on the development of mature oil and gas fields and between 2003 and 2008 its net production increased by 100 percent. During that time it has also maintained an average Reserve Replacement Ratio of 152 percent. The speed of its development has in large part been due to its independence and relatively small size which allows it greater agility in its decision making processes, according to Ibrahim. “It gives us the advantage of being able to move faster and easier than the major companies. Definitely the decision-making is much easier. The process of this is much faster. You can tackle small and medium size opportunities. You don’t have a minimum size of work. So we are looking for whatever opportunities come up and if they suit our business case they will be one of our targets.”
54 www.ngoilgasmena.com
Taking on the giants PICO’s acquisition strategy has seen it take over mature wells from the likes of Shell, Total and British Gas. Its aim is to take over wells that have become too expensive for the companies to continue to work on, then explore deeper to maximise their potential, as Ibrahim explains. “PICO acquires mature fields from major companies such as Shell or ConocoPhilips. The operating criteria of those fields with majors becomes a little bit expensive for them. For us it’s not. We tackle these fields differently from what they are doing.” An example of a successful acquisition was that of the Gemsa field in Egypt, which was producing 6500 barrels of oil a day when PICO took it over. Within six months it had increased capacity to 13,500 barrels a day. “Doubling oil production in a field like this is a great success. It’s all about looking for a new horizon in the same field that nobody else has yet discovered,” says Ibrahim. Describing another successful acquisition, he says: “Two years ago we acquired a field from Total and Samali Aramco and at the time it was only producing gas. We dug deeper and discovered it was possible to also produce oil from the field. Now it is producing 10,000 barrels a day and the plan now is to increase that production by almost three times.” It achieved this, he says, by increasing the “drillability” of the well. PICO now plans to drill three additional wells within the same field. The most challenging area it is work-