Bualuang Water Debottlenecking Project Completed
Wednesday 14 September 2016
Production was restarted on 2 September, after a 10 day shutdown, at the Bualuang field in the Gulf of Thailand on completion of the final tie-in work of a water debottlenecking project. This was a highly complex brownfield project as work to upgrade the facilities was conducted over the last 5 months whilst minimising production downtime. Over 100,000 man-hours of work were conducted offshore by our local contractor Unithai, with the maximum POB of over 200 people supported by the accommodation barge "Posh Bawean" from 23rd July to 31st August.
The sub-surface part of the project was completed at the end of 2015 with the drilling of a new water disposal well and the workover of the existing water disposal wells. This was followed in 2016 with a two phase project to upgrade the surface facilities. The combined project has resulted in increasing the design capacity of the water handling and disposal system from 50,000 bwpd to 75,000 bwpd. Both the drilling and facilities engineering aspects of the project were completed without major incident, recording zero lost-time incidents.
Production is in the process of ramping up as the new system is brought on-stream and tested, but as of 11th September the field was producing at an instantaneous rate of 9,700 bopd at a water disposal rate of 64,000 bwpd, an increase of 1,400 bopd compared to production in late August before commissioning of the new facilities. Capital expenditure to deliver the project was $20 million and it is expected to increase NPV of Bualuang by $80 million and payback within 12-18 months.
Bill Higgs, Chief Operating Officer, commented:
"We are pleased to have successfully and safely completed commissioning and to have first commercial gas production at the Kerendan field. The field will now provide another source of cash flow for Ophir and is the first commercial production of hydrocarbons from Central Kalimantan.
Furthermore, increasing water handling at Bualuang has added materially to the cash generation of the asset. The team did an excellent job in safely completing a technically challenging project while minimising the impact to production.
Both Bualuang and Kerendan have the potential to monetise incremental resource and realise further NAV per share growth for our shareholders."