The Bu Hasa oil field located 200km south of Abu Dhabi, UAE, is planned for a $1.4bn expansion project to increase its production capacity to 650,000 barrels a day (bpd) by 2020.
Owned and operated by ADNOC Onshore (formerly ADCO), Bu Hasa is one of the oldest producing onshore oil fields in the UAE and has been in operation since 1965.
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UAE’s state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has 60% stake in ADNOC Onshore, while the remaining interest is held by BP (10%), TOTAL (10%), CNPC (8%), JODCO (5%), China ZhenHua Oil (4%), and GS Energy (3%).
ADNOC Onshore is currently operating 11 oil and gas fields in the UAE that produce 1.6 million barrels of oil and 5.6 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas a day.
The Bu Hasa oil field expansion project is in line with ADNOC’s growth strategy to increase its total crude production from the current three million barrels a day (Mbd) to 4Mbd in 2020 and 5Mbd in 2030.
Bu Hasa oil field discovery and development history
The Bu Hasa oil field was discovered by the Bu Hasa-12 discovery well in 1962.
Located in the northern part of the Rub al Khali Basin, Bu Hasa was the first oil field in the Arabian Gulf to produce from the Lower Cretaceous Shuaiba Formation (Aptian) in 1965.
The onshore oil field is estimated to hold 6.5 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.
Water injection for enhanced oil recovery was introduced at the field in 1970, followed by commissioning of gas injection facilities in the 1990s.
The oil field was originally developed with four central degassing stations (CDSs) scattered in different places, which were upgraded and relocated into a single centralized facility between 2003 and 2008.
The Bu Hasa field currently produces up to 550,000bpd of oil, which is pumped to the Jebel Al Dhanna terminal for export.
Bu Hasa oil field expansion details
The latest expansion project on the Bu Hasa field involves new oil gathering systems and pipeline networks, as well as conversion of three existing trains in the central degassing station.
The project also involves new gas compression facilities, new produced water injection network, and upgrade of the existing water treatment facilities.
The project aims at improving the overall production efficiency of the field through a second gas lift recovery phase, while streamlining the water handling and reducing the number of inactive wells on the field.
The expansion project is expected to increase the daily production capacity of the field by 100,000 barrels.
Contractors involved
Tecnicas Reunidas, an engineering company based in Spain, was awarded an engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) contract worth $1.4bn for the Bu Hasa expansion project in November 2018.
Target Engineering, a subsidiary of Arabtec, was awarded a $141.8m subcontract by Tecnicas Reunidas for the mechanical and electrical construction works for the expansion project in November 2018.
Arab Center for Engineering Studies (ACES-Dubai) was contracted for the geotechnical investigation as well as the topographical and underground detection survey during the front-end engineering and design (FEED) study of the Bu Hasa integrated field development project in June 2017.
