The Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company (ADMA-OPCO) set an oil production record in the first quarter of last year, the company disclosed in its latest annual review. One of several operating units of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), ADMA-OPCO also said its average oil output of 570,000 barrels per day (bpd) last year was the second highest in the past 15 years. The annual review provides a rare glimpse into the operations of one of the three joint ventures that ADNOC has set up with foreign partners to produce Abu Dhabi's crude oil.
ADMA-OPCO, like most of ADNOC's other subsidiaries, is 60 per cent owned by the state petroleum company. Its foreign partners are the UK's biggest oil company, BP, the French energy group Total, the British-based Inpex Group and Japan Oil Development Company. It pumps crude from two large Gulf oilfields, Umm Shaif and Zakum. ADMA-OPCO said oil production from Zakum last year averaged 316,000 bpd, slightly exceeding the company's target of 313,000 bpd.
It did not provide comparable figures for Umm Shaif, but said the operations unit in charge of the field had a "challenging, yet successful year". ADMA-OPCO also plans to develop several smaller Gulf oilfields. The front-end engineering and design project for the Umm Lulu field was completed last year and the company also finished a full field development study for the Nasr field. Its major projects division reported progress on a gas injection project at Umm Shaif, aimed at boosting oil output from the field.
The division also completed front-end engineering and design last year for ADMA-OPCO's portion of the Habshan integrated gas development, a project to co-ordinate and optimise the production of gas associated with offshore oilfields and Abu Dhabi's biggest onshore field, Habshan. On Tuesday, another ADNOC unit awarded Dh34 billion (US$9.2bn) of contracts related to the integrated-gas project to international firms.
Like ADNOC's two other oil producing units, ADMA-OPCO is undertaking projects aimed at boosting the UAE's total crude production capacity to 3.5 million bpd by 2018 from the current level of about 2.8 million bpd. Among those developments is a water-injection project at Zakum. ADMA-OPCO said this would raise the field's output in 2012 and beyond. That project involved introducing a new offshore platform with facilities including an 11 megawatt power generator to pump 120,000 bpd of water, the company said.
The UAE pumps about 2.2 million bpd of oil, mostly from Abu Dhabi, after curtailing some of its production in compliance with the record 4.2 million bpd of production cuts that OPEC pledged last year. tcarlisle@thenational.ae
