PDO Awards Marmul Polymer Flooding EPC Contract To SNF-Led Consortium

Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) announced on 4 February it had awarded the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for the enhanced oil recovery Marmul Polymer Flooding project to a consortium led by France’s SNF with the UK’s Mott MacDonald as design contractor and Oman’s Bahwan Engineering Company as construction contractor. The contract involves building centralized water treatment and polymer preparation and injection facilities as well as the supply of chemicals for five years. The Marmul field, discovered in 1956, is located in southern Oman. The main al-Khlata reservoir has very heavy, viscous crude and production will be substantially increased using polymer flooding as an enhanced oil recovery technique. Polymer flooding works by adding polymer to water in order to make it more viscous before it is injected into the reservoir. Increasing the viscosity of water leads to a more effective oil sweep which increases both production and the ultimate recovery factor. The project will lead to a 10% increase in the oil recovery factor from al-Khlata reservoir. Project completion is scheduled for 2008. The centralized water treatment facilities will include a primary produced water treatment plant with capacity of 80,000 cu ms/day and a secondary produced water treatment plant with capacity of 30,000 cu ms/day. The polymer preparation and injection facilities station will have a capacity of 17,500 cu ms/day. “This is an important strategic enhanced oil recovery project that will play an important role in sustaining Oman’s long term oil production,” PDO managing director John Malcolm said.

Among other recent Oman developments:

  • PDO has awarded a $12mn well services contract to PSL Energy Services, the Aberdeen-based company said. The two year contract for Hydraulic Workover (HWO) and snubbing services is PSL’s first significant well services contract in the Middle East. The contract will cover well intervention programs for more than 25 high pressure wells in north and south Oman in addition to a five-well fishing program.  

  • Wood Group announced on 24 January it had signed a long-term maintenance agreement with Suez for the 665mw power plant at Al-Rusail. Under the $92mn, 16-year agreement, Wood Group will maintain the eight General Electric Frame 9E gas turbines.