Ali Rashid Al-Jarwan, CEO, Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company

An interview with Ali Rashid Al-Jarwan, chief executive officer of Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company.

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What is the current production capacity of your company? What is your contribution to ADNOC’s overall production?

We are on the growth agenda, as is the case with all global oil and gas producing countries. As a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company (ADMA-OPCO) is playing a major part in the ongoing efforts to increase oil production capacity by 35% to 3.5 million BOPD by 2018 from the current 2.7 million BOPD.

This production target is set to be achieved through three major subsidiaries of ADNOC: ADMA-OPCO, Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO), and Zakum Development Company. For ADMA-OPCO, we are planning to increase production by 370,000 BOPD over current production levels of 550,000 to 600,000 BOPD. The new production target will be achieved mainly from the Lower Zakum field (100,000 BOPD) with 270,000 BOPD from the Umm Lulu, Satah Al-Razboot, and Nasr fields.

Added to the Umm Shaif production share, which currently stands at 275,000 BOPD, and Zakum production of 325,000 BOPD, we are targeting a total production of 1 million BOPD by 2020.

Are the fields under development on track? What is the main scope of work at these fields?

Phase I of the Umm Lulu and Nasr fields is to assess reservoir behavior; however, we are already now moving to full field development of Umm Lulu. We awarded two packages: The first package consists of seven towers and flowlines and a pipeline to Zirku Island to join SARB. For SARB, the company is moving to a full field development to produce 100,000 BOPD, and all seven engineering and construction packages have been awarded.

For the full development of SARB oil field, we have selected the construction of two artificial islands, SARB-1 and SARB-2, which are currently under construction by the ADNOC Civil Projects Division. The location of the islands is 120 km off the northwest coast of Abu Dhabi.

The onshore facilities engineering, procurement, and construction work undertaken by Hyundai covers processing, storage, and export facilities on Zirku Island and wellhead facilities on two artificial islands. Meanwhile, the offshore work undertaken by Petrofac mainly includes around 200 km of subsea pipelines, 55 km of subsea cables, a single point mooring crude loading facility, four offshore flares, and two riser platforms, in addition to drilling utilities on the artificial islands.

ADMA-OPCO has taken advantage of these major projects to develop and train young United Arab Emirates (UAE) nationals in engineering and project management.

When are you expecting the startup of these projects?

ADMA-OPCO is planning to commission and start production from the Umm Lulu field by the end of 2017. For the Satah Al-Razboot field, startup production is forecast to commence by the third quarter of 2017. For this project, all the wells will be drilled from two artificial islands, which are now near completion. Meanwhile, drilling will start in the second quarter of 2014, and eventually we will commission all these facilities, including the majority of wells.

When completed in April 2017, Satah Al-Razboot will be the first offshore digital intelligent oilfield development with a state-of-the-art technology in automated facility in the UAE offshore. The modular construction, energy efficiency, and environmental compliance are major cornerstones of the project design.

Your company has announced a CO2 offshore program as part of the emirate’s project to boost ultimate crude recovery to 70% from the current 50%. What is the status of this program?

The 70% ultimate recovery target is the UAE’s program as well as a corporate objective for ADNOC and its subsidiaries. As a subsidiary of ADNOC, we have a road map to achieve this objective through research and development (R&D), experiment in the laboratory, and pilot projects.

For our offshore operations, we are conducting some R&D works on CO2 injection and, so far, results are very promising. To get more oil through the CO2 injected, we also have another technique called smart water. This technique aims to strip some of the unfavorable salts and make it low-salt water. For this technique, we are currently studying it from a research point of view, and then again, we will move to a laboratory experiment and then a pilot project.

In addition, in all of ADNOC subsidiaries, we are paying special attention and focusing on the design of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects that will help in the future to move recovery from 50% to 70%.

It is really a long journey, and requires a very comprehensive focus on swift efficiency and different techniques on how to extract oil, but we strongly believe that it can be achieved.

Do you have a time frame to achieve this 70% target?

As there are different phases, we have set a deadline for each phase. The R&D part for characterizing the behavior of CO2 from a geological reservoir engineering point of view has been completed. Now the modeling part is being conducted through a joint research program with leading US universities such as Stanford University jointly with the Petroleum Institute of ADNOC.

ADMA-OPCO said that it reduced gas flaring at Zakum field to zero. Which technologies/initiatives did you apply to achieve this?

Our gas processing facility project in the Zakum field was the first project within ADMA-OPCO to achieve zero flaring. With 0.4 MMscf of gas recovered and reused each day through the facility’s vapor recovery system, this sustainable project leads the way in increasing energy saving and, more important, increasing environmental protection.

Overall, it is a long journey and we aim to achieve the zero flaring rate at all our operating fields. The gas utilization is above 98% and by now, it should be close to 99%. We produce more than 2 Bcf/D of associated gas, and we learned how to reduce flaring to only 4 MMcf/D, which is necessary for operating more than 36 flare stacks, which is very efficient given the volume of oil and gas we produce.

What is your company’s short-term strategy regarding onshore and offshore oil and gas development?

Our strategy now emphasizes exploring more gas in the deep area of Khuff and pre-Khuff. This will be our focus for the next 5 years in addition to searching for more gas as well as drilling and developing new fields in general.

What do you see as the biggest technological challenges currently facing the oil and gas industry?

From a technological point of view, we are focusing on automation, which requires a lot of interconnection of people to strategize and to deploy technology. The preparation of the organization to digest all this automation is a big challenge, and we have to increase the level of awareness and the level of knowledge and capabilities within our organization to digest and utilize the automation technology of smart fields more efficiently.

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Ali Rashid Al-Jarwan, Chief Executive Officer, Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company (ADMA-OPCO), the offshore arm of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), says ongoing projects in Abu Dhabi will boost the country’s production capacity to 3.5 million BOPD.