Yumna Field Development

The Yumna field, previously known as the GA South field, is an offshore oil field development located in the Gulf of Masirah, Oman. It is considered to be the first offshore oil field discovery in east Oman.

Masirah Oil, a subsidiary of Rex International Holding, holds a 100% stake in Oman’s offshore block 50, and is the operator of the Yumna field. Singapore-based Rex International holds an 86.37% stake in Masirah Oil.

While the early production testing was performed in February 2020, the Yumna field development plan was approved by Oman’s Ministry of Oil and Gas in July 2020. The commerciality of the field was also declared in the same month.

Location and discovery

The Yumna field is located in the block 50 of Oman, approximately 40km northwest of Duqm. The water depth in the area is approximately 30m.

The block 50 offshore concession is spread over approximately 17,000km² in the Gulf of Masirah.

The Yumna field was discovered in February 2014. The flow rate of the discovery well, in a 48-hour test, was reported to be 3,500 stock tank barrels of light oil a day.

Field development details

The initial Yumna field development plan involves three production wells, a mobile offshore production unit (MOPU), and a floating storage and offloading unit (FSO). The oil is pumped from the MOPU through a flexible flowline to the FSO for storage and later transported to the shore by shuttle tankers.

The Yumna 1 appraisal well was spudded in December 2019 and it started production in February 2020. The early production testing was performed on the well for two months till the end of April 2020 by utilising the Foresight Driller IX drilling rig.

The MOPU was installed in the field in May 2020 and the cumulative output from the Yumna 1 well reached 1.05 million stock tank barrels of oil by the end of June 2020.

The Yumna 2 production well was spudded in December 2020 and it commenced production in January 2021. The production from the well is stabilised at a rate of 9,000 stock tank barrels of dry oil a day.  An electrical submersible pump has been installed to extract oil from the well.

The drilling of the Yumna 3 production well commenced in January 2021. The MOPU upgrade is being carried out to double its liquid processing capacity to 30,000 barrels per day (bpd) in order to handle the production from the three wells. The upgrade works are expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2021.

Contractors involved

Shelf Drilling bagged a drilling rig contract to drill wells for the Yumna field development in November 2020. The scope of the contract included the drilling of two production wells, Yumna 2 and Yumna 3, as well as the Zakhera exploration well during a period of 90 days.

Shelf Drilling commenced the drilling campaign with the deployment of its Tenacious jackup rig at the field in December 2020. The Zakhera exploration well will be drilled approximately 12km south of the Yumna field.

Wings Offshore was awarded a contract to provide a floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessel for the Yumna field in November 2019. Wings Offshore deployed Mt Bull Papua, with a storage capacity of 750,000 barrels, on the field.

Foresight Offshore Drilling was contracted to drill the Yumna 1 appraisal well in November 2019.  The Foresight Driller IX jackup rig was deployed to drill the well.