Pete Bartlett
, CEO,BAPCO
The Kingdom of Bahrain may well be positioning its energy industry to lean towards the downstream segment, but sitting on considerable reserves of heavy oil makes the Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO) an important player in the GCC oil and gas market. The first oil well in the Gulf region was spudded in Bahrain in 1931, and the kingdom begun exporting oil just three years later.
Overcoming the challenges associated with leveraging the complex – but invaluable – energy resource of heavy oil will depend on the industry’s ability to develop commercially viable recovery solutions, BAPCO chief executive Peter Bartlett has recently said in a statement that echoes how he intends to direct the company’s future in the upstream segment.
“Fossil fuels will continue to account for the majority of the world’s primary energy needs for the next few decades, and heavy oil will feature in that mix. In order to compete, though, heavy oil producers will have to overcome cost challenges versus commercially competitive alternatives. They will innovate in order to do so,” Bartlett has been quoted as saying. “At BAPCO, we consider heavy oil in the mix of feedstocks we purchase for our refinery.”
BAPCO, under Bartlett’s leadership, has been largely successful in meeting the growing energy needs of Bahrain. The expansion of its Sitra refinery is perhaps a key move that will enable BAPCO to achieve self-sufficiency. Once complete, the refinery is expected to increase its capacity to 360,000 bpd. BAPCO has also undertaken a project to replace and reroute the 72-year-old Arabia-Bahrain pipeline.
