Pakistan Partners with Canadian Firm to Boost Domestic Heavy Crude Output

Pakistan’s national Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDC) has signed an agreement with a Canadian firm to deploy advanced technology to boost production from heavy crude oilfields, the largest Pakistani exploration and production firm has said.

Under the agreement with Canada’s Synergetic Oil Tools Inc, OGDC will deploy advanced Passive Energy Tool technology aimed at optimizing and boosting production from heavy crude oil fields, the Pakistani firm said.

The technology “is designed to improve flow assurance in highly viscous crude oil wells by optimizing fluid characteristics, reducing the frequency of workovers, minimizing well downtime, lowering operating costs and decreasing the use of production chemicals,” OGDC added.

Pakistan has been scrambling for oil supply since the Iran war started despite being very close to the Middle East and a key mediator in some of the U.S.-Iran talks.

The country is looking to boost its domestic crude oil production to reduce its reliance on imports and to encourage oil producers from the Persian Gulf to set up crude reserve buffers at a planned Energy City near one of Pakistan’s ports.

OGDC, for its part, holds the largest exploration acreage in Pakistan and has the highest oil and gas reserves in the country. OGDC produces about 166,497 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd). This output makes the state-owned firm producing nearly half, or 49%, of domestic crude oil, 28% of Pakistan’s natural gas, and 34% of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) output.

OGDC operates key fields including Qadirpur, Nashpa, Mela, KPD-TAY, and Bettani, and continues to expand through new exploration blocks.

Early this year, OGDC announced an oil and gas discovery at its exploratory well Baragzai X-01 in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

At the end of last year, Pakistan signed five deals for oil and gas exploration with local private and state-owned companies that will develop three offshore and two onshore blocks.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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