Thirst for oil feeds Oman innovation
Future staked on evolving methods
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HARWEEL OIL FIELDS, Oman - Sirens and air monitors surround the more-than-$1 billion oil installation rising off the flat, rock-strewn desert floor in Harweel oil fields in the 120-degree heat of Oman's interior.
Construction crews, mostly Indians and Pakistanis in once bright-colored coveralls washed out by the sun, lay out escape routes and raise airtight shelters intended to save the lives of oil workers if the sirens ever go off.
Far underground, below a mile-thick layer of salt, lies the oil that Oman's state-controlled petroleum company is seeking. It sits in a cloud of pressurized gases laced with hydrogen sulfide at concentrations that can kill in minutes.
In Saudi Arabia, Oman's neighbor, oil production still can be as easy as jamming pipe into the ground and pumping up the oil, or standing back to let it gush forth from the pressure of the reservoir.
But for Oman, "easy oil is over," said Khalid Jawad al-Khabouri, a petroleum engineer at the headquarters of Oman's state-controlled oil company in Muscat, the capital.
At Harweel and several of the country's complex, aging fields, Oman is going after oil the hard way. More than any country along the Persian Gulf, Oman provides a preview of the future of oil.
A sultanate of fewer than 3 million citizens, Oman has staked much of its future on evolving production techniques known as enhanced oil recovery. Geologists and engineers in the oil fields are employing many technologies also developing elsewhere in the Middle East, North America, and China.
The country has invested $4 billion to $6 billion in current enhanced oil recovery projects, said Khalifa al-Hinai, technical adviser to Oman's Oil and Gas Ministry.
Most of the techniques involve pumping some agent - steam and other gases, or chemicals including polymers and detergents - into a reservoir to encourage oil to flow.
For Oman, the plunge into enhanced oil recovery is a necessity.
The world's other oil producers, even Saudi Arabia, will one day follow. With oil prices wedged above $100 a barrel this year, investors worldwide are sinking billions of dollars into enhanced oil recovery.
"The world has to," said Matt Simmons, an energy investment banker and a leading proponent of the argument that oil will run out sooner rather than later, in a telephone interview from the United States. "Because it's the last game going."
Even Oman has had to realize, however, that there's no single "magic undiscovered field or technology," cautioned Sadad Husseini, a veteran former petroleum geologist for Saudi Aramco.
Less flashy moves than enhanced recovery, such as recent decisions by Oman to open its oil fields to more competitors, are at least as smart, Husseini said.
With enhanced oil recovery, "It's just a case of people catching on to the buzzword that this is going to fix it, and we're going to get a whole lot of oil out of it," Husseini said. "And it doesn't quite do that."
Oman's state-controlled oil company started to see the end of easy oil in 2000, when daily production peaked at 840,000 barrels. Then production fell through one bottom after another, hitting 561,000 barrels a day in 2007.
By most accounts, Oman's sultan, Qaboos bin Said, had used much of the wealth of Oman's glory days of oil wisely. He created generous public services and a modern, if pervasive, government - police here routinely stop and issue fines to motorists on the road if their cars need washing, and inspectors scour Muscat for any building not painted the mandated white, cream or other light color. Qaboos's father, Said Bin Taimour, provided fewer than 10 miles of paved road for all of Oman. He allowed Christian missionaries to run the nation's sole hospital.
