Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) has floated an international tender to develop several small oilfields in the independent Gulf Arab producer.
The majority state-owned company said in a statement on its website that the services deal covers the Rima satellite cluster, which now produces 2100 barrels per day from nine fields.
"Another nine undeveloped fields are also included in the tender's scope. All in all, the area has about 650 million barrels of oil in place, of which some 27 million barrels PDO has already produced to date," the company said.
The contract is expected to be awarded in early 2007. Under the deal, the contractor does not have any rights to the produced oil or reserves.
Earlier this year, PDO awarded a service contract to Indonesia's Medco Energi International to develop 18 small oilfields in the Nimr Karim area in southern Oman.
"These service contracts are aimed at raising the production levels of PDO's small fields in a cost-effective way, by granting the service provider a high degree of freedom in its operations and offering it strong financial incentives to increase the production of oil," the statement said.
PDO, which accounts for nearly 90% of Oman's oil production, said it would focus its own resources on developing larger fields that account for 95% of its output.
Oman produced an average of around 750,000 bpd in 2005 and PDO contributed some 633,000 bpd to that.
The company, which relinquished its stake in several concessions last year, has said it would inject an annual $1.5 billion to boost its output to 800,000 bpd by 2009.
PDO has said it expects pumping rates to fall slightly over the next three years before recovering again when the first phases of enhanced oil recovery projects come on stream.
© Upstream 2006
