PDO plans to invest $20b in five years to sustain output

Muscat: Oman’s majority state-owned Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) plans to invest more than $20 billion over a five-year period to sustain its long-term hydrocarbon output.
PDO established a new total oil, gas and condensate production record of 1.293 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), the national oil company said in its sustainability report released on Tuesday.
This total included an average oil daily production of 600,197 barrels per day (bpd), the highest since 2005. The year saw strong and consistent production across oil and gas fields as well as good new oil performance and recovery of gas production from previously closed-in wells.
“Our Well Engineering Directorate reached new levels of activity drilling 644 wells – a 12 per cent rise on 2015, and making 19,600 well interventions – a 49 per cent increase on 2015,” the sustainability report noted.
In a tough economic environment, and to reduce reliance on government funding, the company turned to the international capital market to successfully raise $4 billion in 2016 from a group of major financial institutions, the report said.
“The loan will support the company’s activities which include the construction of major new oil and gas facilities providing long-term economic benefits for the Sultanate. The move will also enable the Government to redeploy resources to other areas of the economy,” the report added.
The low oil price economic environment has meant established ways of working have required a paradigm shift in mindset to significantly improve capital efficiency and deliver competitive projects. All of PDO’s corporate project delivery milestones were achieved on or ahead of plan and all were delivered within the year.
“Our landmark projects at Rabab Harweel, Yibal and Amal are progressing well, and with Shell, we have identified 46 opportunities for incremental development that could yield in excess of 700 million barrels of recoverable reserves.”
A total of 86.4 million barrels of oil, 0.45 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of non-associated gas (NAG) and 24.3 million barrels of condensate were booked as Commercial Contingent Resources (CCR) volumes in 2016.