Bahrain ready for new oil bonanza

MANAMA: Bahrain could potentially by this time next year have a company engaged in development of Khaleej Al Bahrain oil and gas field, Oil Minister Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa has said.

In an exclusive interview during the World Islamic Banking Conference (WIBC) at the ART Rotana Amwaj Islands yesterday, the minister said the kingdom aims to attract foreign oil and gas firms to develop the resources and to be able to do that you need more information.

“Usually you want to have oil wells flowing for at least six months and therefore by this time next year we could potentially see the first development and a plan to initiate long-term production,” he said.

Before that Bahrain would have gathered enough data on the tight oil and deep gas discovery which would allow it to explore partnerships with leading global firms on tapping the resource, added Shaikh Mohammed.

As stated previously, US firm Halliburton started drilling two appraisal wells last month, to further evaluate reservoir potential.The newly discovered resource is expected to be “on production” within five years, the minister reiterated while talking to Reuters editor-at-large Axel Threlfall at WIBC yesterday.When asked for names of potential partners, Shaikh Mohammed said the “usual suspects” meaning unconventional or shale oil experts based in North America and even some Chinese firms were on the radar.

“We are targeting Houston, Texas as a base for a potential virtual data room by next year.
“While simulation numbers are very encouraging, converting resource estimates to reserves is an intense and costly process and not all the resources may ultimately be upgraded to reserves,” he said.
“The additional drilling and data gathering will serve to improve the accuracy and reliability of the estimate.”

In April this year, Shaikh Mohammed announced Bahrain’s biggest discovery of hydrocarbon deposits in decades.

The deposits are estimated to be at least 80 billion barrels of tight oil and between 10 and 20 trillion cubic feet of deep natural gas. Tight oil is a form of light crude oil held in shale deep below the earth’s surface that is 
extracted with hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, using deep horizontal wells.

Ratings agency Moody’s has given a cautiously upbeat assessment of the field’s potential, suggesting the find – if verified by an international oil consortium as being technically and economically recoverable could stimulate private 
investment in the energy sector in the near term.

Using a recovery factor of three per cent as a plausible assumption, it said that Bahrain’s new oil find could eventually yield up to 2.4bn barrels of recoverable oil reserves.

Oilfield services giant Schlumberger has described the oilfield as a borderline “conventional-unconventional play”, implying lower costs than equivalent unconventional plays.

The government is betting that the shallow depths of the Gulf waters will help contain production costs, despite shale developments typically carrying a higher price tag.

Source: http://www.gdnonline.com/Details/443343/Bahrain-ready-for-new-oil-bonanza

 

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