Wasit Province – About 2,000 Chinese workers are about to descend on Al-Ahdab oil field next month to start work on the construction of the central production facility, engineer Ahmad Abdul Redha, the chief of Al-Ahdab section at North Oil Co (NOC) tells me during a tour of the fortress camp that CNPC’s subsidiary, Al-Waha Petroleum, built just 15 km to the west of Kut.
With five rigs on the field, Daqing Drilling, CNPC’s drilling subsidiary, has drilled six new wells and carried workovers on three – out of seven drilled in the 1980’s – since launching work on Al-Ahdab in January 2009. By the end of the year, it’s expected to double the number of rigs in order to achieve the 35 wells target for early next summer when early production should come on stream at a rate of 25,000 barrels per day, and possibly 60,000 b/d if the ministry of oil in Baghdad approves the revised plans, said the 34 year-old mechanical engineer.
The original production sharing contract signed by CNPC in 1997 and renegotiated into a service contract ratified by the government of Nouri al-Maliki in 2008, stipulated producing Al-Ahdab to a peak of 120,000 b/d and sustaining it at that rate for at least six years. However, in the flurry of the astronomical peaks targeted by other companies bidding for contracts in the first and second licensing rounds, CNPC submitted a revised development plan which now aims to push the field to a new plateau of 200,000 b/d. 3-D seismic, a contractual obligation, was completed last August.
The three-dome Al-Ahdab field was discovered in 1979 by Iraq National Oil Co (INOC). It is estimated to have over 1 billion barrels of recoverable reserves.
The light crude (32° API) from Al-Ahdab will be pumped through the strategic pipeline to the Nassiriya gathering center and from there to Tuba tank farm for export via Basrah Oil Terminal. The associated gas will be channeled to the Zubaydiya power plant, 70 km from Al-Ahdab, currently being built by Shanghai Electric.
At the moment there are 200 Chinese staff working on the field with 350 Iraqis doing the support jobs as drivers and translators. NOC has 60 people working with CNPC on Al-Ahdab. So far, the Iraqi staff rate their experience working with CNPC very positively. “They are less condescending in their approach than westerners” says Ahmed. And “we are finally working with new modern rigs after being used to our old dilapidated rigs, it’s a joy,” drilling engineer Mohammed told me as he showed me around one of Daqing rigs on site.