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Oman has reversed the decline in oil and other liquid hydrocarbon production and lifted total output to just over 1m barrels a day (b/d) in 2015, a new report released by the US’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) in January says.
This compares with 715,000 b/d in 2007 and the previous peak of 972,000 b/d in 2000.
“Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques helped drive this production turnaround, although the country also experienced some additional production gains as a result of new discoveries,” the EIA says. “Oman’s government aims to keep production near its current level for at least the next five years by continuing to apply EOR techniques and the cost management associated with it.”
Oman’s the biggest Middle East oil producer that is not a member of OPEC.
Its gross natural gas production grew to more than 1.13trn cubic feet in 2013, but it dropped slightly to 1.09trn cubic feet in 2014. Nearly 81 per cent of Oman’s gross natural gas production in 2014 came from non-associated natural gas fields, according to government figures.
Oman’s gas reserves totalled 24.3trn cubic feet as of January 2016, according to the Oil & Gas Journal, the EIA says. A report published by the US Geological Survey in 2012 said that the estimated mean undiscovered energy resources in the South Oman Salt Basin—located in the southern part of the country—totaled more than 370m barrels of oil, 315bn cubic feet of natural gas, and more than 40m barrels of natural gas liquids (NGL).
“With rising production levels, a growing petrochemical sector—which relies on liquefied petroleum gases (LPG) and NGL—and additional potential resources, the country is unlikely to significantly alter its dependence on hydrocarbons in the short term,” the EIA says.