Optimised production

Jamil Akili, president of oilfield services at Woodlands Energy Services (WoodServ), talks to The Energy Year about the company’s production optimisation services and the advantages of its modular early production units and extended flareless well testing services. WoodServ is a provider of turnkey oilfield production solutions.

What solutions is WoodServ offering to the oil and gas sector?
WoodServ is a regional company focused on the GCC market and providing oilfield services designed to optimise/enhance hydrocarbons production from wells. Our main expertise lies in providing techniques, equipment and operation and maintenance services to accelerate the monetisation of oil and gas developments while eliminating flare gas.
Production boosting using wellhead compression, early production facilities (EPFs) and extended flareless well testing are amongst the solutions we offer. We develop modular-mobile surface equipment that is adapted to the field’s parameters and we operate and maintain the equipment on behalf of our clients. This solution helps gain efficiency in oil and gas production while minimising the opportunity cost of flaring gas.
Here in the UAE, we operate under a partnership with Mazrui Energy Services, one of the leading local oil services companies. We leverage their local manufacturing capabilities to build our engineered and designed equipment in the country.

What is your footprint in the UAE and which projects are you working on?
WoodServ is the first company to deploy modular early production units in the UAE. Our equipment is easily transportable and can be mobilised quickly. We first deployed that technology in 2019 on an unconventional sour gas project with the objective to avoid flaring any gas during that multi-year well testing operation, and to capture it, process it and deliver it to distribution pipelines to monetise it.

How is WoodServ contributing to creating value for customers in a sustainable fashion?
All of our solutions have the common objective of reducing the environmental impact of oil and gas production. The central point to our technology is to capture the associated gas and use it to generate power for either our activities or our client’s facilities. We also introduce hybrid energy solutions with a mix of solar power to run our operations.
We are also looking to work with partners in order to find solutions for the monetisation of the captured gas. As it might not always be economical to transport it to remote locations, we have developed solutions where edge computing, bitcoin mining or cloud computing services could be delivered in remote locations utilising the gas on the spot, helping to create value out of otherwise trapped energy.

What competitive advantage would you say the company has developed?
At WoodServ we always try to focus on areas of the market that are underserved. Our strategy has been to look at both ends of the oil and gas production process and help accelerate the monetisation of early production sites with our modular solutions while at the other end extending the life of an asset by using our compression solutions at the wellhead and boosting mature fields’ production.
The WoodServ team comes from different backgrounds within field operations and has strong expertise. We look at issues from our clients’ point of view and design the solutions ourselves to best suit their specific needs. In addition, we have great partnerships with an array of OEMs, including the top compressor manufacturers, which allows us to get the exact equipment required for a specific project.

What current developments are you undergoing and what future opportunities do you see arising?
We are constantly looking for ways to best align ourselves with our major customers. One way we are doing so is to slowly decrease our dependence on imports and global logistics by looking at ways not only to fabricate in-country, but also to manufacture. We have signed an MoU with ADNOC in that regard which represents a major step in that direction, first looking to manufacture spare parts based on the economic viability of the project. Based on our agreement with the other stakeholders, we may build a plant in the future.
We are very optimistic about the ecosystem ADNOC is trying to develop around local manufacturing and see opportunities coming along for us in that regard. Overall, we are also very positive about the market potential for our services, which, as mentioned, remains underserved based on the maturity of the fields in the region. That is the main driver behind our ambition to focus on expanding in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and penetrating into new markets in the MENA region.
Our strategy is increasingly successful and we are participating in multiple projects of a similar nature in 2023.

What new technologies are you integrating into your operations?
We are very focused on the digitalisation of our field services. We have developed digital twins for all of our operations and facilities to analyse the data and find ways to further optimise our services and assets and increase safety.
We now also offer a broader range of digital security services in the areas of video surveillance, facial recognition and tracking in order to increase safety in critical infrastructure and make sure issues can be identified prior to any incident.

What are your main goals for 2023 and what strategies are in place for pursuing them?
The aspect that we see growing, of course, is the focus on decarbonisation, for which we have existing capture solutions. We intend to further develop that aspect and adapt our services for use in CCS and carbon dioxide reinjection for enhanced oil recovery.
All in all, we are very optimistic for 2023 as we expect a number of projects to provide us with new opportunities to further develop our product line and services. One such example is our partnership with Houston-based ADS Services, a manufacturer of pressure control equipment for drilling and production, whose products fall under the renowned Power Choke brand.

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