Projects
KMG Building Up
The decline in oil prices has forced the oil companies around the world to reduce investment expenses. At the end of last year, the National Company KazMunayGas also had to revise its capital expenditure plan. As a result, the actual capital expenditure were reduced by 31% of the planned one. However, as stated by the Company, it had no effect on geological exploration projects.
The works to increase the hydrocarbon reserves are still prioritized by KMG. The Company has developed and implements the medium-term plan of activities to increase its hydrocarbon potential.
This plan includes:
- geological exploration, including exploration of oil and gas fields and exploring the contract territories both onshore and offshore;
- subsoil use rights acquisition, hydrocarbon exploration and production at the prospective areas;
- participation in geology and geophysics at the existing and new oil and gas projects;
- making researches and case studies for assessing the hydrocarbon resources both onshore and offshore;
- participation in creation of geological and geophysical database for the supervised projects-corporate database (CDB) of NC KazMunayGas JSC and national database of oil and gas projects (NDB).
Within the frameworks of geological and technological monitoring of oil and gas projects, the annual and long-term programmes for major oil and gas projects in the area of exploration, appraisal, development and technology development of hydrocarbon fields are analysed and reviewed. Monitoring is carried out through participation in meetings of the technical committees of theoil and gas project operators and subsidiaries, in the working groups on evaluation or re-calculation of hydrocarbon reserves, analysis of the design development documents for the development and other activities.
Location of geological exploration projects
At present, KazMunayGas is the owner of 44 fields with consolidated reserves, exceeding 800 million tons of oil and condensate. As a results of 2014, the consolidated oil and condensate production volume amounted to 22.5 million tons.
Over the last 6 years, the total growth of of oil and condensate reserves in Kazakhstan amounted to 100 million tons due to exploration, from which 24 million tons account for KazMunayGas share. This is a small indicator. KMG began to transform the exploration and production direction to change this situation, to ensure that the geology would be focused on exploring new regions and sedimentary basins not only in the Republic of Kazakhstan, but also abroad.
The first step was the creation in the last year of Research Institute of Production and Drilling Technology within the KMG Group Of Companies, based on KazNIPImunaygas and Caspimunaigas institutes with a total personnel of about 800 people.