Atyrau Oil & Gas
Embamunaigas in Search of Prospects
Artur Shakhnazaryan, AtyrauThe Atyrau Oil Company Embamunaigas faced a serious problem of reducing its resource base. The Company will loose a part of its recognized assets due to the natural depletion of reserves. As for replenishment by new assets, exploration of new potential areas goes out of planned schedule and often leads to the results that are not expected.
Extension of Liman
Producing subdivision of the national company - JSC Exploration & Production KazMunaiGaz (EP KMG) - attracts serious partners, such as Schlumberger and Petrofac, for stimulation of production of its fields (see. “Emba is in the Process of Re-Energizing”, Petroleum, No. 1-2014). However, these efforts are not enough. Putting into operation new fields, as well as new great discoveries are required.
At the beginning of the year 2014, the exploration period of potential block Liman of JSC Embamunaigas (EMG), a subsidiary of EP KMG, has been extended one more time, up to February 2015. EP KMG got the Liman block in 2000 under the terms of the dispossession according to the Agreement No. 406 for a period of 25 years, previously this area was owned by other subsoil users. EP KMG has got it after the Government in court dispossessed previous owners of this asset. An initial five-year period of geological exploration of the block ended in 2005, but was extended until 2011. Then the Committee of Geology and Subsoil usage under the RK Ministry of Industry and New Technologies agreed to extend the period of geological exploration of the southern part of the block until February 2014. And here is another extension for another one year.
Liman block is located in the Atyrau region, along the southern ledge of the Peri-Caspian Depression. Its area is about 6,470 sq. km. Infrastructure of the area is well-developed and includes oil and gas pipelines, as well as the main railway line. Oil in this area deposited in the above-salt complex, over the domes and along the peripheries of the salt domes. Production on the licensed block is carried out in the fields Novobagatinskoye, Rovnoye, Martyshi, and Kamyshitovoye. Novobogatinskoye field is of the special interest.
EP KMG has identified three prospective structures on the licensed Liman block. For 14 years of exploration, the Company was able to discover the only small deposit of oil in the fall of 2010. Deposit discovered in the Liman block is located on the southern slope of the Novobogatinsk salt dome that is in the immediate proximity to the South-East Novobogat oilfield developed by the EMG. Free oil flow was obtained in the first exploration well at a depth of more than 1,200 meters from the deposits of Middle Trias.
More precisely, the oil gusher with a flowrate of 24 tons of oil per day blow out from the depth of the 1,302 meters. However, the exploration seismologists provided data on other formations saturated with hydrocarbons that are possibly located under ground. The drilling was continued. And the assumptions of the specialists were proved. Oil flush with the volume of 23 tons per day was obtained from a depth of 1,100 meters, and on the New Year's Eve the oil blew out from a depth of 1,500 meters. The oil of new oilfield that is the largest one among all developed oilfields in the region since the beginning of 1990's, is of very high quality; it is light and oily, having almost no mercaptans and hydrogen sulphide.