Petrobangla, the state-run oil, gas and mineral resources corporation, has decided to start commercial oil production in Kailashtila gas-field from August next year, said Mohammad Enamul Haque, state minister for power and energy, on Tuesday.
‘We hope we’ll be able to start drilling a well in the gas-field in January next year and complete the digging by July. Hopefully, oil production will start in August next year,’ he said.
The oil reserve has been estimated to be 109 million barrels in the Kailashtila gas-field.
However, it will be possible to extract only around 44 million barrels or 5.5 million tonnes of crude oil from the field, said a Petrobangla official.
He also said that the experts would fix the drilling site for oil extraction from Haripur oil-field next week.
The state minister was talking to reporters after a meeting in the energy ministry which discussed the Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration Company’s (BAPEX) drilling plan in only Kailashtila.
He said the supply of oil from the field would take more time as it is necessary to build large infrastructural items like processing plants and production pad.
The Sylhet Gas-Fields Ltd will finalise the project proposal involving more than Tk 300 crore and will soon submit it to the ministry through Petrobangla, said officials.
They also said that a foreign consultant would be appointed to assist BAPEX since it has no experience in oil production. Four companies have been short-listed through a tender process to appoint one consultant.
In May the Petrobangla decided to extract oil from the country’s first two oil-fields at Haripur and Kailashtila in Sylhet, discovered more than two decades ago.
The decision to begin commercial production of oil in the fields in Haripur and Kailashtila has been taken on the basis of a 3-dimensional seismic survey and well-log reports that have provided detailed information on the potential of the two oil reserves.
According to Petrobangla’s data, the two fields have a combined reserve of around 137 million barrels, but only 55 million barrels or around 7 million tonnes can be recovered from the two oil-fields.
The BAPEX, being engaged by SGFL, conducted the field operation for 3D seismic survey of Kailashtila and Haripur gas-fields at the end of last year.
Petrobangla’s exploration division discovered the Haripur oil-field in Sylhet in 1986. It was leased out to a foreign company, Scimitar, for producing oil.
Scimitar extracted 5,44,100 barrels or 68,873 tonnes of oil from the oil-field from 1987 to 1994 but abandoned it when it found that extraction was no longer profitable.
BAPEX discovered another oil-field at Kailashtila in Sylhet in 1989.
It drilled an exploration well there and conducted successful drill stem test (DST) in two oil layers out of five.
Courtesy of New Age
