KOC to drill 900 wells in Lower Fars heavy crude oil
The wholly state-owned Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) is planning to drill more than 900 wells to develop the heavy crude oil lying in the Lower Fars field in the north of Kuwait.
Discovered in 1978, the Lower Fars formation belongs to the Ratqa field, a reservoir saturated by crude oil.
Located along the Iraq border, the structure of Lower Fars reservoir lying in a shallow sandstone underground appeared very quickly fragmented and heterogeneous, thus very challenging to develop.
Classified as extra heavy crude oil the gravity of the Lower Fars field is ranging between 17 API and 11 API while the viscosity may vary from 10s to 1000s centipoises.
Because of its low depth in the ground, Lower Fars reservoir has a low natural pressure that will not help the exploration and production of the field.
Despite all the challenges mentioned above, KOC intends to develop Lower Fars in order to compensate the depletion of aging fields such as Burgan in targeting 5 million barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil production in Kuwait by 2020.
In 2010, KOC awarded Foster Wheeler the front end engineering and design (FEED) contract for the development of the Lower Fars field.
In 2012, WorleyParsons completed this FEED work.
According to WorleyParsons FEED conclusions, KOC has decided to develop Lower Fars in phases.
With $7 billion capital expenditure, KOC is planning to produce 60,000 b/d of crude oil by 2018 in a first phase.
Drilling 900 wells then more than 1,300 wells, KOC is planning to ramp up the production up to 270,000 b/d of crude oil from Lower Fars.
KOC to award Lower Fars Phase-1 EPCs on H2 2014
The Lower Fars production is calculated to supply the giant Al-Zour New Refinery Project (NRP) running in parallel.
Because of the nature of the extra heavy crude oil in Lower Fars reservoir, KOC and WorleyParsons have decided to use the cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) technique.
Usually implemented in water-rich countries, such as Canada, the CSS technique will require in Kuwait significant offsites and utilities to support the process.
Therefore WorleyParsons designed the Lower Fars Phase-1 project in three packages:
– Oil central processing facility (CPF) with water treatment and waste treatment
– Pipelines systems including crude oil inlet, water inlet and oil export to terminal
– Offsites and utilities plus all associated infrastructures
KOC qualified ten engineering companies for these three engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts.
Then KOC called for tender these Lower Fars EPC packages on October 2013.
Four engineering companies were bidding the first package estimated to $4.5 billion capital expenditure to be awarded on second half 2014.
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