Denmark’s Maersk Oil aims to maintain its current oil production capacity at Qatar’s Al Shaheen oil field using innovative technologies, a company executive told JPT Online.
Al Shaheen is Qatar’s largest offshore oil field and the country’s swing producer. It is currently producing about 300,000 B/D. The field was originally targeted to reach 525,000 B/D production capacity under Maersk’s production sharing agreement, which expires in 2017. “Our focus remains on maintaining a stable plateau for an extended period,” Lewis Affleck, managing director of Maersk Oil in Qatar, said.
The field is a very complex and the reserves are very difficult to extract. “When Maersk Oil and the state of Qatar signed an exploration and production sharing agreement for Al Shaheen in 1992, it was considered a marginal and unattractive field by many energy companies,” Affleck said.
Using its extensive knowledge and experience of developing similar tight and technically challenging carbonate formations in the North Sea, the company has turned the field into a commercial success.
In 2011, Maersk Oil opened its global Research and Technology Centre at the Qatar Science and Technology Park.
