Halliburton has been at the forefront of Oman’s oil and gas industry development for more than 55 years
Zeinoun Klink, the company’s vice-president of Eastern Gulf Geomarket, speaks to Oil Review Middle East about the company’s Oman operations.
Discussing the company’s longstanding involvement in Oman, Klink explains, “Halliburton has been heavily involved in the upstream business lifecycle for many of the operators in Oman, with services spanning drilling & evaluation, completion & production and Landmark software, as well as integrated project management.”
Klink mentions that a key operator in Oman has recently introduced an integrated project management approach involving lump sum turnkey-type projects.
“We were awarded the full turnkey project for one of Oman’s biggest oilfield developments, where Halliburton execute the entire scope for the well, from road construction, civil works, well construction and completion, all the way to the hook-up. It’s a major project involving more than 300 wells, where Halliburton is the main integrator of its services as well as the subcontractors, a one stop shop approach. We see this type of project becoming more common in Oman, as operators are challenged to reduce costs and manage risk. Halliburton is well positioned to take advantage of this shift in project execution, with years of experience from other parts of the world.
“So we are on a continuous journey in Oman which is going to grow.” The company will soon be starting a deep gas project on similar lines for one of the major IOCs, he adds.
Technical challenges
With its deep and tight gas as well as mature oilfields, Oman offers no shortage of technical challenges, but Halliburton’s experience of more than 100 years and its leadership in unconventional plays in North America have stood it in good stead.
“In Oman the gas play is very tight, so Halliburton has pioneered hydraulic fracturing, drawing on our experience in North America,” says Klink. “We brought in the horsepower to hydraulically fracture these formations and allow the hydrocarbons or gas to flow to the surface. This is a huge area of investment; it’s very expensive because the water and raw material resources are not readily available in country. In the USA, sand and water are now available in plenty, but in Oman fresh water for hydraulic fracturing is scarce, so a lot of resources are going into producing fresh water for hydraulic fracturing. Halliburton has been working very closely with our partners to develop technologies that use produced water instead, and we’ve successfully trialled a breakthrough technology. I am confident, partnering with our customers, we can take it to the next level and commercialise it, thereby freeing up millions of gallons of fresh water which can be used elsewhere for the benefit of the people of Oman.”
The second factor affecting the economic viability of hydraulic fracturing is the availability of sand, he continues. “You’d think you’d find a lot of sand here in the desert, but it’s the wrong type of sand! Currently we use manmade propant, from outside the country, and we are working with the government collaboratively to find locations where there are some outcrops of high strength silicate that can be used for hydraulic fracturing.”
Turning to oil, Klink comments, “A lot of the assets produced today are mature assets, and are going through a lot of EOR-type production enhancement. Here, water production is an issue. Oman produces a high rate of fluids, probably a similar amount to Saudi Arabia in terms of bpd, but a significant amount of this is water. This is a huge liability, not only from a cost perspective but also from an environmental point of view. Operators are doing a good job in managing this water, but it comes at a cost. We are working on key technologies to control that water production and minimise it from coming to the surface. There is a lot of focus on this area, and that will continue into the near future.
“The second part of enhancing oil productivity is maximising contact with the prolific part of the reservoir, with thin targets,” he continues. “I’m talking about drilling something like 1,000-1,500m horizontal wells in a reservoir say two feet thick. That requires innovative technologies and experience in terms of modelling and the ability to geosteer into the sweet spot. So a lot of collaborative effort is going into how and where you place your wellbore, maximising contact with the reservoir rocks to maximise productivity.
Listen and respond
Much has been said about the importance of technology innovation in oil and gas. Klink is keen to stress that innovation for innovation’s sake is not the Halliburton way.
“Our approach is very simple – it’s called listen and respond. That means listening to the customer and their challenges, thinking it through collaboratively, coming up with a solution and introducing it to the customer. Our local technical teams collaborate with our customer, with our regional and global teams, to find a solution to the challenge. It is not necessarily about inventing something new, sometimes it might involve using something we already have in our toolbox in a different way. We might use something developed in, for example the Gulf of Mexico, or Alaska, or anywhere else in the world, and adapt it to the environment and the challenge to provide a unique solution.
“For example, a customer here who was using steam injection to heat up the oil in the reservoir, asked us to come up with a solution to control the steam propagation and improve the associated sweeping efficiency, thus reducing costs and making the operation more efficient. We are adopting existing chemicals in our tool box, modified for the environment, and a unique placement technique to ensure its success. More to come on this space as we trial in live well. Many times, new technology will have to be developed, going through the Technology Acquisition Process (TAP) to bring to market. Ultimately, we follow our value proposition, to collaborate and engineer solutions to lower the cost of production for our customers.”
The growth of digital
Digitalisation is a hot topic and there are “big things going on” in this arena, where Halliburton’s expertise is recognised by its clients, Klink says.
“We’ve done breakthrough trials with our customers on well construction, and on EOR. The well construction process, from identifying where and how to drill, to full field development, normally takes months, because of the complexity of the workflow. Halliburton introduced a well construction flow process through our Landmark software, where all disciplines can interconnect simultaneously live, updating the models through Halliburton’s Well Construction 4.0 platform. That has taken the process of well construction planning from months down to two to three weeks, and it can be done in even less time as the information acquisition gets better and better. The operators have seen huge benefits, and we continue to expand in that arena.
“The second one is on machine learning,” he continues. “To give an example from Oman, where a large number of ESP pumps are used, which collect massive amounts of data such as pressure, flow rate, current etc. The operator asked Halliburton, what can be done with all this data? Data management comes right into our backyard. Our Big Data group have conducted mathematical analysis, simulations and so on, and we found that these machines are actually talking to us, we just didn’t understand their language! They’re telling us when they start feeling sick, they’re giving us symptoms of their sickness ahead of time, but we’re not listening to them until they die! Which means downtime and loss of production to the operator.
“The pilot programme gave us a lot of indications that these pumps tell us when they’re sick and give us plenty of notice, so effectively, we are able to proactively predict failures weeks before they happen, which allows the operator to schedule maintenance, and it becomes part of a maintenance programme rather than a shutdown programme. “Following the pilot, we have been awarded the implementation phase, and more to come on this as we continuously learn with our customers. It’s a fantastic project that’s ongoing right now.”
Focusing on In Country Value
Localisation is at the top of the agenda for Oman’s oil and gas industry, through the In Country Value (ICV) pillars. Halliburton is proud of its record in achieving a high percentage Omanisation of its workforce. “Our journey starts with our summer internship programme, then recruiting upon graduation, taking our young engineers through rigorous training programmes,” says Klink. “Some of them go on to work for the oil companies here. We do not mind losing people to the operators – we see it as part of the process of developing our Omani talent.
“We’re very committed to engaging with universities,” he continues. “As an example, we’ve granted Sultan Qaboos University access to the majority of our Landmark digital software used in the industry, from geoscience, to reservoir to petrophysical interpretation, with all the required support programme, where our technical team give real-life examples of how to use the software to the students. It’s a win-win for both of us, as the students will graduate from university being familiar with the leading petrotechnical software, so more useful in the workforce, and promoting Halliburton at the same time.
“On the local manufacturing and procurement side, Halliburton has a strict policy to source in-country, and only if something is not available will we source it from outside. Vendor development is part of our strategy; we take local SME companies and incubate them to a point where they are able to stand on their own feet, whether as a supplier or subcontractor, under the Halliburton umbrella.”
Halliburton was the first company to introduce a repair centre for drill bits in Oman, he adds. “We saw that the market was ripe, and the logistics were favourable compared to other countries in the Middle East, so we established our repair centre for the entire Middle East here in Oman. Bits are sent here from countries including Iraq and UAE, as well as those used in Oman, instead of to the USA as in the past. Our key personnel are Omanis who have been trained in the USA for several months to adhere to our service and quality standards.
“Another initiative we are pushing ahead with is an Eastern hemisphere manufacturing base for ESP pumps here in Oman, a flagship manufacturing and training centre which will service the EH market growth.”
