NRG MEOG: Updates abound

Iran, Oman and Kuwait grabbed the headlines in the Middle East over the last week with a string of significant announcements on project progress and contract awards.

Foremost of these was the announcement from Tehran that it will soon complete the up- and downstream phases of the supergiant South Pars offshore gas field, while the country’s oil minister stated that nationwide gas output has reached a record level of 1.04bn cubic metres per day, with around 700mn cubic metres per day coming from South Pars alone.

Elsewhere in Iran, the country’s main national drilling firm has announced that wells continue to be drilled at a rate likely to raise the annual total above previous years. With 117 wells drilled during the first 10 months of the 2020 Iranian calendar year, which ends in March, NIDC is set to beat the 120 per year average of 2018 and 2019.

In Oman, the UK’s Petrofac was awarded contracts by Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) worth a combined $300mn for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and delivery work at Marmul in the south and select concessions in the north. Meanwhile, an agreement was belatedly signed with a local company to carry out studies for the development of the billion-barrel Habhab heavy oil field.

In Kuwait, state-owned Kuwait Oil Co. (KOC) awarded $1.15bn worth of deals for the five-year lease of 31 drilling towers following a tender that had been postponed during Q3 2019. Upon delivery of the new units, KOC intends to begin a 400-well drilling campaign as the country seeks to achieve ambitious oil production goals.