Volumes weren’t mentioned in the press release that was issued early April, but the tone was clear nonetheless; Aramco is determined to find new volumes of oil and gas, and is also successful in doing so.
Fourteen new finds were announced, of which eight seem to be standalone discoveries, whilst the remaining six are more likely to be newly discovered reservoir intervals within existing fields. This suggests the nature of the exploration drive; it seems to be mostly driven by near-field and even in-field drilling.
The well test results provided in the article are quite varied, with the oil discoveries testing between 115 and 2,840 barrels per day and the gas finds between 1.5 and 32 MMscf/d.
Lots of activity
We briefly spoke to Sean Siegfried, CEO of Saudi Geophysical, about the geophysical acquisition market in Saudi. He confirmed: “There is a remarkable drive to firm up more near-field volumes.”
“About 30 to 40 % of the world’s seismic acquisition crews are based in the Middle East at the moment,” Sean explained. “In total, there are between 15 to 18 crews active at the moment, of which 90 % is about performing 3D acquisition of areas around perimeters of existing assets. Saudi has eight to nine crews, Kuwait has two and Bahrain is now embarking on a major project to map its shallow waters all around the island, amounting to around 5,000 km2.”
“These projects are not short-term either,” Sean said. “Most of these projects will easily last for three to four years.”
From streamer to OBN
The way of seismic data acquisition has changed compared to how it was done before. First of all, the rapid commercialisation of nodes has resulted in a shift from streamer to node acquisition. Especially in the shallow waters of the Arabian Gulf, nodes are more flexible to put in place with light vessels.
Second, a country like Saudi is on a mission to prove all additional volumes they can get their hands on. Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, Saudi’s ruler, also known as MBS, has ambitious projects to pay for. At the end of the day, it is oil and the newly built Red Sea hotels that will ultimately need to generate the cash to sustain the public spending. But in the meantime, it looks as if oil will be the main cash generator, even at the depressed prices of the present day. Exploration does not seem to be affected by it either. The Saudis think longer term than most IOC’s.
