Oman ... all set to pump more oil
Oman hopes to boost crude production to 1 mbpd in 2015
MUSCAT, March 17, 2015
Gulf Arab oil producer Oman hopes to boost its crude oil production by 5 per cent to 1 million barrels per day (mbpd) in 2015, a senior oil official said.
Oman is moving ahead with plans to pump more even though some of its neighbours, which are members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), have called on producers from outside Opec to cut or freeze production to support oil prices in an over supplied market.
"We hope that we will reach that (1 million bpd) mark at any point this year," Salim Al Aufi, undersecretary of the oil and gas ministry told reporters on the sidelines of an energy event in Muscat.
Aufi later told Reuters that Oman's total average crude production now is between 948,000 to 959,000 barrels per day (bpd) and the Gulf country has a target to pump an annual average of 980,000 bpd in 2015.
Most of the supply growth will come from state-controlled oil producer Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), which has a planned annual average target of 570,000 bpd.
The rest will come mainly from oilfields developed by US-based Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) including 120,000 bpd from Mukhaizna field, 90,000 bpd from Block 9, and 12,000-13,000 bpd from Block 27, Aufi said.
Oman is a small independent producer but its crude forms part of the benchmark price for millions of barrels per day of exports from Middle East producers to Asia.
Oman is also an important exporter to Asian markets. In 2013, Oman exported an estimated 833,400 bpd of crude oil and condensate, of which nearly 60 percent went to China, according to the US Energy Information Administration.--Reuters
