2014: A year of opportunity for the UAE

“Today our oil production is 2.5 mbpd, by 2020 it will be 3.5 mbpd. In order to produce an extra 1 mbpd you need a lot of force in terms of efficiency, technology and resources. It’s the same with our gas fields,” he said.

Amongst the UAE’s most highly prized assets is the Shah gas field. Adnoc has recently announced that the site will not produce gas until the first quarter of 2015.

When they do come online, the Shah fields will process an estimated 28 million cubic metres of sour gas per day yielding approximately 14 million cubic metres per day of sweetened gas, to be used mainly in the production of electricity.

Adnoc remains upbeat about the UAE’s exports in the coming year.

“Most of our customers are from the Far East. We take whatever we need and are able to export the rest,” he said.

Despite this optimistic outlook, the UAE has become a net importer of gas in recent years. Surging domestic demand has meant that the UAE has had to source gas from abroad. Last year the UAE awarded a contract to build an LNG import terminal on its east coast at Fujairah. The UAE already receives imported gas from Qatar which it uses to fuel desalination and power plants.

Speaking at a recent conference, the UAE’s energy minister HE Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui told reporters that the UAE may consider importing shale gas from the United States in order to meet its own domestic demands.

In the long term, the UAE will look to its own reserves to deliver enough gas to meet domestic demand. However, the low price of US shale gas could make it an attractive short term option.

Adnoc has also announced that it is considering a range of applications from IOCs, as it decides whether to keep working with western oil majors or allow Asian companies to purchase stakes in the UAE’s largest oil fields.

The onshore Abu Dhabi concessions had been in effect for decades and expired in January. of this year. Adnoc are yet to name partners.

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Gearing up to protect the UAE’s sour gas workers
United Safety’s Elie Daher and Mike Gilbert discuss the company’s role in providing life-saving equipment to the UAE’s oil & gas workers

The complexity of the gas at the UAE’s Shah and Bab fields will present a number of serious challenges to companies charged with excavating and sweetening it.

United Safety’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Elie Daher, believes that the oil & gas industry as a whole is about to sharpen its focus on health and safety in 2014.

“The overall risk profile of the oil & gas sector is on an upward trajectory. Projects are becoming more complex and costly sophisticated technologies are needed,” he said.

United Safety has recently won a number of key contracts in the UAE to enforce safety at the country’s sour gas plants.

“United Safety has won a substantial contract in the UAE to supply breathing air systems for a major oil & gas producer. Winning this contract gave us a platform to launch our long term plan for the UAE which we are measuring in terms of decades not just years,” he said.

Amongst the products being deployed in the UAE is United Safety’s Air Qruise technology series; a breathing management system that can be incorporated into a range of vehicles that enable the user to work, travel and transit safely through toxic environments.

In concentrations as low as 100 parts per million, H2S gas paralyses the olfactory nerve, destroying a person’s ability to smell it. This can lead to workers failing to detect a leak until it is too late. The Qruise technology removes this risk and deploys breathing apparatus instantly once the presence of harmful gases has been detected.

“H2S is a major challenge in many projects in the UAE. We have some Air Qruise Trooper units working in the Shah gas fields, one of the most challenging sour gas projects in the world,” said United Safety’s vice president for the Middle East and North Africa, Mike Gilbert.

Gilbert believes that new technology will continue to evolve to meet the challenges presented by the UAE’s complex sour gas fields.

“The next step will see even more specialised solutions, like our Rover concept which enables safe transit in hazardous environments where there are concerns with ignition hazards and toxic gas.

“We are 100% committed to the health and well-being of our UAE clients for a long time to come. It’s an exciting time. I see a bright and safer future here for the entire industry,” he said.

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Home away from home
Spacemakers 250 man habitat challenge

Spacemaker were set the task of providing accommodation for 250 men working on an offshore facility in the UAE. The project requirements were to deliver accommodation, sewage facilities and a functioning office block on a non-inhabited, non-serviced island which was logistically 14 hours of the coast of Abu Dhabi.

Paolo Pedroni, commercial development manager for Spacemaker, said that the scale of the project has meant that the company has had to use some innovative and ambitious techniques to deliver the project.

“The use of a packaged MBBR [moving bed biofilm reactor] and packaged RO [reverse osmosis] enabled us to have the two most critical components of the project pre commissioned,” he said.

With little knowledge of the existing conditions of the island prior to arrival, Spacemaker opted to assemble most of the village prior to delivery.

“All equipment, fire alarms, furniture, networking and even bed sheets were installed in our factory before being loaded onto our landing craft transporter [LCT].

We took no risk with heavy cranes for offloading and incorporated a roll on, roll off trailer system, where all deliverables were placed on moveable trailers, rolled on to our LCT and later rolled off on the Island. This enabled us to reduce loading times by 100%,” he said.

Weather conditions caused work to be halted on the island a number of times, but overall the project has been hugely successful.

“We have been able to meet client expectations and forecasted costs, in the most remote of locations, all within the specified timeframe,” he said.