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Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) is well known for its
advancements in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) technology and it has
successfully implemented pilots and full-scale projects across its
onshore licence area in the Sultanate of Oman for almost 30 years,
motivated by its considerable but not readily accessible
hydrocarbon resources.
Oman is heavily dependent on the hydrocarbon sector as a source
of income however, the government plans to reduce the country's
dependence on the industry as part of its five-year plan
implemented in 2016 and a consequence of the low oil prices
witnessed between 2015-2017. Over the course of the last two years,
there has been a noticeable increase in the reporting of future
renewable energy projects and it seems that Oman is finally
applying sustainable projects as an alternative solution for its
energy needs - in part spurred on by successful and innovative
solar EOR technology, which clearly demonstrates the potential of
its inherent and abundant solar energy.
Enhanced Oil Recovery in Oman
Enhanced recovery is defined by IHS Markit as including all
'non-conventional' injection methods used to increase the recovery
of hydrocarbons (mostly oil), by the means of injection of
manufactured products into the reservoir to modify the hydrocarbon
(e.g., gravity, viscosity, composition) and/or reservoir physical
and chemical characteristics (e.g., saturation, permeability). The
predominant types are: Chemical, Miscible and Thermal. As a
petroleum industry technology, EOR is of importance because with
this technology, oil recovery is improved by as much as 60%.
According to Royal Dutch Shell plc (Shell), "A 1% increase in the
global efficiency of hydrocarbon recovery could deliver three years
of annual production at today's level".
Oman has often been described as an 'EOR playground' with
several successful projects demonstrating all three techniques.
PDO, which is owned by the Government of Oman (with a 60%share),
Shell (34%), Total S.A. (4%) and Partex (2%), is a world leader in
the field and in 2017 commercial projects were underway at Marmul
(chemical), Harweel (miscible), Amal and Qarn Alam (thermal),
please refer to Figure 1 for locations. It is well documented that
by 2025, PDO expects that more than 23% of its production will be a
consequence of EOR projects. Back in 1987, reserves were boosted by
600,000 barrels (bbl) because of a steam soak test in one well at
the Amal field, that could not be produced by primary or improved
recovery methods. This was the country's first addition to reserves
from an EOR technique, although additional oil from EOR pilots had
previously been produced at other fields.
Figure 1: Selected EOR and
renewable project locations in PDO's Block 06 licence
area.
In 1956 Oman discovered its first oil field, Marmul, situated in
the South Oman Salt Sub-basin. The field came onstream in 1980 but
according to Shell, only 15% of the oil in place could be recovered
despite a waterflooding scheme being in place. As a result, polymer
flooding was implemented at Marmul in 2010 with the aim to increase
the recovery factor to over 30%. The flooding method was switched
to include polymers due the highly viscous oil (water flooding
doesn't sweep viscous oil to wells) and roughly 100,000 bbl of
polymer solution was injected each day. PDO reported in 2018 that
over the seven years of the project, 14.6 million barrels of oil
(MMbo) have been delivered from two project phases. Also at Marmul,
and due to the high cost involved with injecting large quantities
of surfactants, Alkaline Surfactant Polymer injection (a less
expensive alternative) is being trialled. PDO reported this as a
success in 2017, due to an increase in the recovery factor of
10-15%.
The Harweel cluster of fields are also located in the South Oman
Salt Sub-basin and generally contain light but sour oil in deep old
reservoirs. Miscible gas injection (the most established EOR
technique and an effective method for maintaining reservoir
pressure) was first implemented at PDO's Harweel cluster in 2012
and by end-2013, production had risen to 30,000 barrels of oil per
day (bo/d) when PDO declared the project a success. The most
commonly used gases are methane, liquefied petroleum gas, nitrogen
and carbon dioxide. CO2 is not only effective for
recovery but also reduces greenhouse gas related emissions through
sequestration however, the method can be expensive and risky due to
the injection of toxic gases at high pressure. In 2016, PDO
reported that its 'Harweel (2AB)' project, one of the world's
largest miscible sour gas injection projects, had reached its full
capacity injection rate of 5 MMm3/d; the expected total
recovery from this project with miscible gas injection is around
45%. A bigger follow up is now underway which involves sour
miscible gas injection into multiple Harweel oil reservoirs.
Furthermore, sour gas will be partially recycled from the adjacent
Rabab field to develop condensate, and at the time of writing, it
is the largest capital project at PDO with a reserve add of more
than 500 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMboe). The
Rabab-Harweel Integrated project is expected to come onstream at
the end of 2019.
In fields containing oil with a density of less than 20° API,
thermal recovery is commonly used to improve the flow. An
award-winning recovery project developed by PDO and said to be the
world's largest thermal project is currently underway at Qarn Alam
in the Ghaba Salt Sub- basin. In Thermally-Assisted Gas-Oil Gravity
Drainage (TAGOGD), steam is injected into the shallow Cretaceous
Kahmah Group reservoir fractures, which heats up the rock and
significantly reduces the oil's viscosity by a factor of 100. Thin
oil flows from the matrix to the fractures and then drains by
gravity to the rim. The method requires fewer development wells to
heat the reservoir than with conventional steam flooding, therefore
lowering the project's cost. First steam via this technique was
first produced in 2011 and in 2017, approximately 3.3 MMtons of
steam were injected which resulted in 6.8 MMbbl of oil production.
TAGOGD is reported to have increased the recovery factor at Qarn
Alam from 3 to 30%.
Solar technology within the oil industry
Moving forward to more sustainable energy techniques yet still
for the purposes of oil extraction, one of the most intriguing
emerging techniques is the use of solar power for steam creation in
EOR, currently employed at the Amal field in the Eastern Flank
Sub-basin. PDO announced in 2015 that it planned to build one of
the world's largest solar plants with GlassPoint. This new 'Miraah'
facility (Miraah means Mirror in Arabic) uses large curved mirrors
to focus sunlight on a tube containing water which produces steam
to feed in to the field. The plan is to build a 1 gigawatt solar
thermal facility, providing a sustainable solution for providing
steam and thereby saving 5.6 trillion Btu of natural gas each year
- the amount of gas required to provide electricity to over 200,000
people and providing up to 80% of a field's annual steam needs (see
Figure 2). The project is expected to reduce CO2
emissions by over 300,000 tons per year and steam generation from
the first glasshouse module commenced in November 2017. The pilot
project which is already in operation at Amal will continue
alongside the full-scale development.
A further joint initiative between PDO and GlassPoint was
announced in 2018 in the form of a new technological centre,
SolarRISE (which stands for Solar Research, Innovation and
Sustainability in Energy), to develop and test solar technologies
within the oilfield environment. The focus will be on cost
reduction, and as well as working to develop Miraah it will
evaluate solutions globally for using solar energy in other
industrial processes.
At this point, it is worth noting that contrary to initial
assumptions, the motivation for solar EOR development wasn't an
attempt at 'going green' via the reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions but a gas saving initiative along with cost implications
- it is cheaper to create steam from solar energy than from natural
gas. However, creating electricity from renewables was, until very
recently, more expensive than the generation of electricity from
fossil fuels. But with dwindling hydrocarbon resources and a real
need to diversify the country's energy economy (spurred on by the
huge drop-in oil price between 2015-2017) there has been a
noticeable recent increase in the reporting of future sustainable
energy projects. In Oman, six new solar and wind projects are
planned aimed at delivering approximately 2,600 MW from renewables
(including waste-to-energy) by 2024.
Beyond oil and gas
In its transition to become a fully-fledged energy and water
management company and in-line with the reinvention of oil and gas
companies worldwide, PDO has installed solar powered panels to
replace car park canopies which generate electricity for three of
its office buildings (the company plans to completely power its
Mina Al Fahal headquarters with solar energy by the end of 2018 and
during off-peak times it will feed into the domestic grid), it is
also using solar powered street lights and cat's eyes which store
sunlight to light the roads in its concession area, Block 06.
Moreover, the company is undertaking a Solar PV Independent Power
project with a nominal capacity of 100 MW peak AC at Amin in
southern Oman; it is the first renewable independent energy project
for the company. Reports suggest an incredible amount of interest
was received from local and international energy companies and the
contract to build and operate the plant went to a consortium led by
Japan's Marubeni Corporation. Ultimately, PDO will buy the entire
output of the plant under a 23-year power purchase agreement,
commencing on the commercial operations date which is expected in
May 2020. The plant is expected to save 70.5 MMm3 of gas
annually, resulting in a financial saving of USD 17 million a year.
CO2 emissions will be reduced by approximately 137,120
tons annually. And… advancements don't just stop at solar for PDO's
renewable journey, in the pipeline are wind turbines with a
potential 10-20 MW capacity, again situated in the south of the
sultanate.
In 2018, PDO released news of a collaboration with Phaze
Ventures (an investment and innovation platform) and the SparkLabs
Group (a global venture group) to launch a major new accelerator
based in Muscat. "The SparkLabs Energy Accelerator" will focus on
energy technology in the region and it is hoped it will boost local
energy start-ups and attract international companies to Oman; it is
part of an initiative to develop the country as a global future
energy technology hub. SparkLabs Energy will work with PDO and
Phaze Ventures to identify and assist start-ups to expand in the
Middle East region via the new hub.
Clearly there is much potential for a country with not only one
of the highest solar energy densities in the world, but also
excellent wind resources in the east and south with speeds
rivalling those of already commercially successful European sites.
Hopefully the transition beyond oil and gas in Oman, assisted by
its high profile solar EOR technology and other infield solar
operations, will be the swift creation of a new and sustainable
energy industry.
Figure 1: Selected EOR and
renewable project locations in PDO's Block 06 licence
area.
Figure 2: Miraah
facts - modified after GlassPoint (2018)
