BP has commenced production from the Ghazeer field in the Omani desert ahead of schedule. The company’s latest gas start-up delivers critical national infrastructure for Oman and reflects BP’s commitment to resilient and focused hydrocarbons.
The remarkable story of unlocking energy from deep below the Omani desert has just entered a new chapter with the start-up of natural gas production from the Ghazeer field located in the country’s remote interior.
The next wave of production for Oman has come onstream ahead of schedule, thanks to major advances in efficiency and working practices.
Flaring reduction techniques – honed in the US onshore – also helped to drive down emissions during critical on-site well testing.
BP CEO, Bernard Looney, said when plans to reinvent BP were introduced, it was clear that to deliver them, the company would have to perform as it transforms.
“There are few better examples of how we are doing just that than Ghazeer. This project has been delivered with capital discipline four months early, wells are being drilled in record times and, importantly, safety performance has been excellent,” Mr Looney said.
Bringing production safely online from the Ghazeer field, where the gas is locked in dense rocks five kilometres underground, extends BP’s track record of overcoming challenging geological conditions to deliver energy for Oman’s economy. It comes less than three years after the start-up of the Khazzan field in 2017.
Both fields are part of Block 61, in which BP has a 60 per cent stake, along with partners Makarim Gas Development Limited, which has 30 per cent, and Petronas, with 10 per cent.
With the introduction of Ghazeer, production capacity is expected to rise to 1.5 billion cubic feet per day and more than 65,000 barrels per day of associated condensate.
With an estimated 10.5 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas resources, the block has the capacity to deliver approximately 35 per cent of Oman’s total gas demand.
And applying lessons learned from onshore operations in the US, Ghazeer wells were tested using the ‘green completions’ concept, which sent hydrocarbons during testing to a production facility instead of flaring them.
Since adopting this approach in 2019, 201,000 tonnes of CO2e emissions have been eliminated – equivalent to removing 44,000 cars from the road for a year.
