Case studies

Petrofac entered into a 15-year contract with Petrom, south-east Europe’s largest oil and gas producer, to provide production enhancement services for the Ticleni oil field and its eight satellite fields in western Romania.

Operational highlights

• a new country of operation where we are evolving Petrofac’s organisation in Romania
• successfully completing a challenging transition schedule (three months) and scope
• ensuring that the Ticleni operations were sufficiently safe and feasible for operations within the short, three-month transition period
• safely operating nine oil fields since take over

Petrofac is providing a range of services to increase production

• improving recovery rates
• optimising operational efficiencies
• extending field life
• investing to upgrade the facilities

In return Petrofac is rewarded on the basis of a tariff per tonne of oil produced.

An integrated offer for our customer

Unique to this contract is that it is able to harness many of the capabilities available from the wider Petrofac group of companies, in particular the consultancy businesses. Petrofac’s significant production and well engineering knowledge, combined with the wider operations and training capability from within the business will deliver an integrated solution for the fields in alignment with Petrom.

The Ticleni oil fields

The Ticleni oil fields, which are land based, have been in production since the 1960’s. To date, there have been over 1,000 wells drilled of which more than 400 are still active and approximately 300 continue production on a daily basis. Production rates, as might be expected in a field of this phase of its life, have been declining in recent years and there are numerous challenges to overcome along the way to ensure Petrofac can deliver successful results, including the key objective of safely enhancing production.

Since taking over the fields in late 2010, Petrofac has halted the decline and production has been maintained flat since commencing operations, with minimal capital expenditure.

An integrated offer for our customer

Petrofac will harness many of the services available from the wider Petrofac Group over the life of the contract. In particular, its significant production and well engineering knowledge, combined with the wider operations and training capability from within the business, will deliver an integrated solution in alignment with Petrom.

In July 2012, Petrofac commenced a drilling programme to increase production, meet recovery targets and maximise value from the Ticleni oilfields. The integration of expertise from the subsurface, drilling, procurement and maintenance teams created a cost efficient programme, with the deployment of two drilling rigs and a heavy workover rig. In addition to spudding 11 wells in 2012, there are plans to drill new wells and sidetrack shut-in existing wells throughout 2013. 

In addition, Petrofac embarked on a heavy subsurface work programme that includes generating an oil field management (OFM) database, preparing geological and reservoir models, digitising well data, and reprocessing existing and acquiring new 3D seismic data. The results of this subsurface work are hoped to result in additional new well locations being identified and drilled, enabling Petrofac to further enhance production.