Bahrain Government still to award Awali field contract
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The outcome was expected around the middle of 2008 but now Oil Minister Abdul-Hussain bin Ali Mirza has advised the media that Bahrain will award a tender to double to 70,000 b/d output from the Awali oil field in December. The authorities have short listed ExxonMobil, Occidental and Maersk for the contract to overhaul operations at the field and drill for deeper oil. The Awali field is located within a salt-related, slightly asymmetrical, north-south trending anticline. The structure is highly faulted, with more faults on the western flank than on the eastern flank. On the western flank, the faults are all down-thrown to the west having a vertical displacement ranging from 1.5m to 45m. The deeper horizons are less faulted than the shallower ones. The field produces from the Ahmadi, Wara, Mauddud, Nahr Umr, Arab and Khuff formations, with the first four of these units being also known as the "Bahrain zones." The main producing reservoir is the Mauddud Formation (Mid Cretaceous), which yields some 25% of the field output.
The only increments to Bahrain’s reserves are likely to come from improved recovery, new pool discoveries in the two existing fields or new discoveries offshore. Given the long history of exploitation from the country's two fields, any significant expansions would seem unlikely. Bapco’s plans to double capacity of the Awali field to 70,000 bo/d once an international oil company is selected are therefore generally viewed as optimistic.
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