PTTEP To File Algerian Field Plan in 2017

Thailand's PTTEP as operator has completed drilling at Algeria's Hassi Bir Rekaiz with a successful appraisal well and will file a field development plan next year. Meanwhile a protest by local people blocked access for a week to a field development by France's Engie and Sonatrach earlier this month.

Algerian state Sonatrach and partners Thai PTTEP and Chinese state CNOOC have completed a drilling campaign on the 2,686 km² Hassi Bir Rekaiz permits of eastern Algeria that began in 2011. Sonatrach has a 51% interest, PTTEP is operator with 24.5% during the exploration phase, while CNOOC too has 24.5%.The area is close to the border with southern Tunisia.

The Bou Goufa-2 well, the last appraisal well of this campaign and located in the Bou Goufa–Rhourde ez Zita discovery area, flowed at an average rate of 2,406 b/d oil and 2.9mn ft³/d associated gas, said a PTTEP statement on August 16.

PTTEP CEO Somporn Vongvuthipornchai described the drilling campaign as a "great success... PTTEP and our partners will prepare and submit the field’s development plan to the Algerian authorities in early 2017 for approval.”

Graphic credit: PTTEP Factsheet as of August 3, 2016

PTTEP, an upstream firm 65.29%-owned by Thai state run refiner PTT, has another project in Algeria, at blocks 433a and 416b, which began producing oil from the Bir Seba field in October 2015 and in which it has a 35% interest and a net crude entitlement of 2,200 b/d. PetroVietnam has a 40% interest in the project, just to the northwest of Hassi Bir Rekaiz, while Sonatrach's interests is 25%.

PTTEP has 38 projects worldwide, including an 8.5% stake in the Anadarko-led Mozambique deepwater Area 1 discoveries expected to be developed into a major LNG project in the 2020s and which have reportedly attracted interest from ExxonMobil together with Qatar Petroleum among others.

Touat blockade

Meanwhile, young local people blockaded the Touat gas field development site in southwest Algeria, demanding jobs and transport to and from the site from the nearby town of Adrar, according to an August 12 report by Maghreb Emergent.

Workers at Touat were unable either to leave or re-access the site for a week and food was not allowed during that period, the report said. It added that residents of cities in southern Algeria had organised sit-ins in 2014 and 2015 to demand jobs, prompting the government not to issue work permits to young people coming from northern Algeria even if they were qualified.

Touat is a joint development by France's Engie (65%) and Sonatrach (35%) covering ten fields that is targeting first gas in 2017, with plateau production of 4.5bn m³/yr and a project life of 27 years. Spain's Tecnidas Reunidas is the main contractor, and Algeria's Grands Travaux Petroliers its subcontractor.

A well-placed industry source told Natural Gas World August 16 that the 'incident' was now over, and access to the Touat site had been restored.

Mark Smedley