Page 10 - MEOG Week 29

MEOG ProJeCts & ComPanIes MEOG
Iran seeks investors for Changuleh oilfield
Iran
IrAn this week has announced publicly that it is seeking $2.2bn in investment for the build-out of its Changuleh oil eld on the border with Iraq.
Ministry of Petroleum (MoP) information was published by Shana, the o cial media outlet of the country’s oil and gas sector, outlining plans for a 19-well, two-phase project to achieve pro- duction of 40,000-50,000 barrels per day from its estimated reserves of 3.4bn barrels.
According to SHAnA, Phase 1 is expected to last 40 months, four wells will be drilled with two existing exploration wells being subject to work- over, resulting in the production of 15,000 bpd of oil, while a 100-km oil pipeline and separation facilities are set to be built.
Phase 2 will last 60 months and entails the drilling of 13 new wells as well as the construc- tion of infrastructure facilities, bringing output to the anticipated 40,000-50,000 bpd total.
The field is located in the Anaran Block, which was discovered in 2005 with the involve- ment of norway’s then-Statoil Hydro and rus- sia’s Lukoil. e formation is shared between Iran and Iraq, where it is known as Badra.
Preliminary studies by the eld’s discoverers estimated recoverable reserves at 400-650mn barrels of light (22 API gravity) oil.
More recent studies by the local Petroleum engineering and Development Co. (PeDeC)
have suggested that oil recovery from Changuleh could reach 65,000 bpd.
Further russian involvement would appear to be the best fit for Changuleh, considering Lukoil’s earlier exploration work and the opera- torship of Badra by Gazprom ne , the oil arm of the russian state gas giant.
Indeed, a non-disclosure agreement (nDA) was signed in 2017 between Iran’s oil Indus- tries engineering and Construction Co. (oIeC) and Gazprom neft for the development of Changuleh and the nearby Azar eld. e agree- ment was endorsed by the national Iranian oil Co. (nIoC), but while oIeC and Gazprom ne agreed to hold meetings to discuss their co-oper- ation, Tehran’s e orts to source investor partners suggest that little has come of that deal.
Tehran intends to develop the eld using the integrated petroleum contract (IPC) model, which was unveiled as part of e orts to stimu- late investor interest in Iran and to replace the unpopular buyback contract model.
However, considering the dramatic degrada- tion in relations between Iran and the US and UK, and ongoing sanctions, attracting any for- eign bidders will be a major stretch for Tehran and any assistance it can secure will likely come at far less favourable terms to the MoP than stip- ulated in the IPC.™
Iran’s plans for Changuleh
Source: NIOC
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 29 23•July•2019