How does the Ghasha concession play into ADNOC’s larger gas strategy?
Today ADNOC has a self-sufficiency gas strategy, different developments play a major role to achieve this target. Ghasha concession, and ultra-sour gas development, is one of the key players in self sufficiency. The Ghasha concession consists of Dalma, Hail and Ghasha, and other fields, which are major contributors to gas self-sufficiency.
Today, the initial numbers show Ghasha concession will produce 1.5bn standard cubic feet per day of gas, we are producing also condensate and other products like NGL and oil.
ADNOC has several partners on this concession–how will they contribute to the development of the field?
We are proud of having Eni, from Italy, OMV, from Austria, and Wintershall, from Germany as major shareholders and partners in our Ghasha concession. Today they are playing a very strong role, they have very strong access to the market, they have a vast technologies in terms of digitalisation, automation and adding to that they have well defined experience in sour gas development, so they are going to be contributors with ADNOC in the story of developing a centre of excellence for sour gas.
What work is currently happening in terms of developing this concession?
Today in ADNOC we have very clearly mandates to deliver Dalma gas in the next 5 years, followed by Ghasha in the next 10 years, and that will give us the full portfolio of Ghasha concession.
In order to develop the self-sufficiency and to meet our mandates, we are working on parallel activities, so we are working in different fields, areas to achieve targets. We are currently completing FEED, we are very soon going to tender the EPC packages for Hail and Ghasha and now currently we already floated in the market the EPC packages for Dalma development. At the same time, we are building the jackets, installing the jackets for Dalma, at the same time we are constructing 11 islands under National Marine Dredging Company (NMDC) so there are parallel activities in order to meet our mandates of gas self-sufficiency.
Tell me about your contract with NMDC, and the choice to use artificial islands rather than platforms.
ADNOC usually conducts evaluation in terms of HSE of people, environmental impact, operating cost plus capex. All these elements contribute to decide whether we go for a platform or island, and of course the depth of the water plays a role. The decision was to go for an island, due to HSE, protecting our people and our environment and optimising our operation costs.
ADNOC is committed to In-Country Value, that commitment has been very well recognised in awarding the contracts to NMDC, that contract contributes 80% to our ICV. We are talking about 1.36bn. 80% of this value will be recycled and used locally here. All the local markets will benefit from this. In addition the other mega projects coming very soon from the Ghasha concession we have estimated from 50-60% ICV will be contributed from these projects.
You mentioned environmental impact. What measures are taken pre-production to protect the sensitive marine environment in which ADNOC will operate?
ADNOC for the first time we have implement the integrated project delivery, which means we have involved all the stakeholders in the projects during the design phase, we have involved Abi Dhabi Environmental Agency in designing and locating the island, plus what are the measures we have to add in our mandate in order to protect the environment, We have done the largest environmental baseline survey for the Ghasha area, we have moved a few of the islands from their locations in order to protect our environment and marine life. Based on this information, and the massive data we have received from this survey, we understood how we can build our facilities while protecting our nature.
