Page 7 - MEOG Week 46 2022

MEOG PRICES & PERFORMANCE MEOG

Bahrain makes two gas discoveries

BAHRAIN BAHRAINI officials this week announced the Boston Consulting Group having been hired to
discovery of two gas reservoirs, though no esti- develop the strategies and Lazard appointed as
mate of their size has yet been provided. financial adviser.
Chairman of the Kingdom’s energy invest- “The Kingdom itself has not really had a
ment and development arm Oil & Gas Hold- comprehensive energy strategy that’s looking
ing Co. (nogaholding) Nasser bin Hamad Al forward for the next 20, 30 years, and the option-
Khalifa was quoted by BNA as having provided ality, the trade-offs, the choices that we’re going
details about the discoveries of two gas fields in to have to make in that time period,” he said.
the Al-Joubah and Al-Jawf reservoirs to King nogaholding was previously the invest-
Hamad bin Issa Al Khalifa. ment arm of the National Oil & Gas Authority
He said that the “latest discoveries and posi- (NOGA), which was abolished by King Hamad
tive results have provided valuable information bin Isa Al Khalifa in September, with the firm’s
to help with the evaluation of wells to benefit functions assumed by the Ministry of Oil.
from [the potential] of the promising natural gas In February, it hired a team of advisors to
resource”. He added: “This information available work on plans to monetise oil and gas assets, with
to us paves the way for the future development Thomas noting that “everything is on the table”.
and production of the natural gas resource in the Thomas said at that point that nogaholding was
interest of the kingdom of Bahrain,” he said. continuing appraisal and assessment work for
The announcement noted that nogaholding’s the development of the 80bn barrel offshore
upstream-focused subsidiary Tatweer Petro- Khaleej Al Bahrain (KAB) shale deposit, which
leum Co. had carried out all of the drilling oper- the MoO anticipates as having the potential to
ations on the fields. produce up to 200,000 barrels per day (bpd).
Tatweer is expected to carry out further drill- However, the combination of complex geol-
ing during 2023 and 2024 to test the Al-Taweel ogy and its offshore location have raised ques-
and Al-Sara layers below the Al-Jawf reservoir. tions about feasibility.
It will also perform horizontal drilling in the Manama, however, remains hopeful that
Al-Juba well to improve productivity. developmental drilling can begin by the end of
News of the discoveries comes just a week the year ahead of first oil in 2023. “Commer-
after the parent firm’s CEO Mark Thomas told cially what we’re looking at is quite a challenging
Reuters that a Bahraini energy strategy and development,” he said. “It may have a lot of oil,
nogaholding’s operational plan are likely to be but it’s going to be difficult and costly to extract,”
decided upon within the next six months, with Thomas said.™

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