Page 11 - MEOG Week 32
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MEOG ProJeCts & ComPanIes MEOG
Yemen asks for more as production resumes ... slowly
yemen
THE internationally recognised Yemeni govern- ment recently called on international oil rms to resume E&P in the country as it looks to recover from the ongoing civil war.
on July 31, Reuters reported that it had seen a memorandum prepared by Yemen’s Ministry of oil and Minerals, which said that those involved in the Yemeni oil and gas sector should resume production.
In the document, Yemeni oil and Minerals Minister Aws Abdullah al-Awd encouraged rms to set up Yemen headquarters in the tem- porary capital Aden.
The civil conflict has consumed Yemen since 2015 and has seen oil output tail o from 127,000 barrels per day in 2014. Despite holding oil reserves amounting to 4bn barrels, investiga- tions by Middle East Oil & Gas (MEOG) in 2018 put production at just 16,000 bpd. oil output peaked in 2001 at 441,000 bpd.
e process of resuming production has been drawn out. A visit to Yemen’s Shabwa oil eld by a team of engineers from Austria’s oMV in March 2018 fuelled speculation that production might soon resume at the shut-in eld in south-cen- tral Yemen. is marked the rst deployment in Yemen of oil engineers by a foreign company since fighting escalated between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed government in Septem- ber 2014.
Reports suggested that oMV had been con- sidering carrying out new studies designed to restart production in the S2 Block, but it has yet to commit to returning to Yemen, though rumours were rife that its return was imminent. oMV also operates the Al Uqlah (Habban) eld.
ough oMV has publicly said nothing since about a restart, the company’s 2Q2019 results
announcement was accompanied by a data- set that showed that production in Yemen had resumed in 2Q2018 at 2,000 bpd, with the latest quarter’s output averaging 5,000 bpd.
Meanwhile, Q2 results from Australia’s Pet- sec Energy, released in late June, showed that it too was preparing for the restart of production and that work had commenced on an oil transit pipeline ahead of completion by the end of the year. Interestingly, Petsec said that “oMV has maintained oil production in the order of 14,000 [bpd] since April 2018 in the neighbouring Block S-2 from its Habban oil eld (350mn bar- rels)”, with shipments of 500,000 barrels made every“1to2months”.
In January, a senior source at Petsec told MEOG: “We have been intimately involved in encouraging operations and seeking support from the Hadi administration to restart our production.”
e company operates the onshore Damis Block S1 and Block 7 (Al Barqa permit) licences in the Marib Basin.
Petsec’s results showed that output would soon resume from An Nagyah oilfield in the Damis Block S1, with the company pointing to the convenience of the new pipeline as a route to maket.
It said that “the company’s engineers esti- mate that the cost to restart oil production at An Nagyah at a rate of 5,000 [bpd] ranges between $5mn to $10mn and would take between three and six months to effect the restart from the time of receipt of Yemen Government access to Block 4 oil export facilities.” It noted that plans to rehabilitate facilities would be completed by the end of July, allowing immediate restart once the approval had been received.
Week 32 13•August•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P11
