Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) and US-based Glasspoint Solar’s combined solar enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project in the Amal oilfield in southern Oman has won the best ‘EOR Project of the Year’ award at the Oil & Gas Middle East and Refining & Petrochemicals Middle East Awards 2016.
The project known as ‘Miraah’ (or mirror in Arabic) has, quite deservedly, in the past received several accolades and has been recognised in the regional oil and gas industry for its innovative use of solar power (captured in a glasshouse sort of structure) to produce steam to extract oil from the tricky geological formation – thereby saving PDO significant amounts of money from spending on expensive gas-based extraction methods.
The winning nomination was highlighted by the judging panel as “being a pioneering, highly-innovative and cost efficient EOR project,” which has gone full throttle this year in producing steam from solar power to help extract crude oil.
“This is a green project that utilises a natural resource for the production of oil. This indeed is a pioneering project in the Middle East,” Said Amur Al-Abri – PDO’s Yibal Khuff project engineering team lead, said after receiving the trophy. “I am really very proud to see that we have been commended by the judges. It’s really a pleasure.”
On the environmental aspect of this project, Al-Abri said, “It is a great time to get this project online as there is a lot of pressure (on PDO and the regional oil and gas industry) of cutting down the carbon footprint, and to save fuel. This would not have been possible by burning natural fuels. This is more effective and saves energy for the upcoming generations.”
The judging panel were unanimous on their opinion of the ‘highly commended’ nomination, which went to Technovita for its Novas Energy project. One judge highlighted the success of the company’s projects, by saying: “100% success rate achieved in production improvement in the last two years; 85% success rate since inception. Over 350 wells treated in Canada, USA, Kuwait, Russia, Kazakhstan and China.”
