Ophir makes progress on South East Asian assets

LONDON, September 13, 2016 – UK’s Ophir Energy produced first gas at its Kerendan field in Indonesia and completed a debottlenecking project at its Bualuang field in Thailand, the company announced today.

Ophir commenced commercial production from the Kerendan gasfield this month after acquiring the asset in March 2015. Production started at a rate of 85,000-142,000 cubic metres (3-5 mcf) per day to allow Indonesian state electricity company Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) to commission the associated power plant and transmission system.

In the first phase, sales will be maintained at a restricted volume of about 142,000 cubic metres (5 mcf) per day to meet demand in the project’s Buntok region. A 160-km transmission line was built from the power plant to Buntok, and an additional 130-km line between Buntok and Tanjung is to be completed later in 2016.
Once this second leg is completed, production is expected to increase to 0.57 mcm (20 mcf) per day.

Ophir holds a 70% operating stake in Kerendan. Under the existing gas sale agreement, PNL is to purchase about 207 mcm (7.3 bcf) of gas per year. Total contracted volume for this first production phase is about 3.46 bcm (122 bcf).

Production also restarted on September 2 at Ophir’s Bualuang oilfield in the Gulf of Thailand after a 10-day shutdown that saw the completion of the last leg of a water debottlenecking project.

The subsurface part of the project was completed at the end of 2015 with the workover of existing water disposal wells and drilling of new water disposal wells. The upgrade of the surface facilities was just completed.

With this project, the capacity of the field’s water disposal system was increased from 50,000 bpd to 75,000 bpd. As of September 11, the field was producing 9,700 bopd for 64,000 bpd of water, compared to 8,300 bopd before the commissioning of the project.

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