Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) is seeking international partners to process volumes of ‘produced water’ that it generates daily as a result of its oilfield operations, into “steam quality water”, a report said.

The company plans to float a tender soon inviting international players to offer commercially viable technological solutions for the reuse of part of PDO’s oil-contaminated water that is produced along with oil, reported Oman Observer, quoting a top PDO official.

On average, around eight barrels of water are produced for every barrel of oil that PDO produces — a figure that is projected to rise from year to year, Amran al Marhubi, Technical Director of PDO, was quoted as saying.

He said the proposed project will seek to treat and reuse part of the hypersaline component of produced water — volumes with a salinity 10 times higher than seawater.

“PDO alone produces 350 million cu m of produced water per year. This represents around 20 per cent of the country’s consumption for agriculture and domestic use. Half of this water is near potable quality, which means it has a salinity less than seawater. The other half is hypersaline with a salinity 10 times than of seawater,” Al Marhubi explained.