Dubai December 8 2021: Sharjah, the third largest emirate in the seven-member UAE federation, may launch an offshore bid round in 2023 as the state-owned Sharjah National Oil Corp seeks to develop the emirate’s biggest discovery in more than 37 years, an official told S&P Global Platts on Dec. 7.
Sharjah National Oil Corp. expects the offshore round to follow in the footsteps of the first international licensing round that was launched in 2019, CEO Hatem al-Mosa said in an interview on the sidelines of the Middle East Executive Petroleum Conference in Dubai.
“We are working on potential other areas to open up for exploration offshore,” Mosa said.
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“It would be a bid round, but it is still in preparation phase.”
Eni is a partner with SNOC in Block B in Sharjah, where it discovered the Mahani reservoir, with the first drilled well achieving flow rates of up to 50 MMcf/d of lean gas and associated condensate in 2020.
Eni and SNOC produced first gas from Mahani in January. However, the companies didn’t disclose the volumes produced from the Mahani-1 gas well.
SNOC, the operator of Block B, and Eni each hold a 50% stake in Mahani field as part of the Block B concession agreement signed in 2019 after the conclusion of Sharjah’s license round. The two companies are also partners in the onshore concession areas A and C, where exploration is actively in progress, with Eni the operator.
Block B prospect
SNOC is limiting the production from Mahani-1 gas well at less than 50 MMcf/d in order to collect data and delineate the reservoir, Mosa said.
SNOC and Eni plan to drill two wells in Mahani in January and an exploration well in a different prospect in Block B.
“Hopefully, if we do a discovery in the second prospect and we delineate Mahani better we would continue the drilling program after 2022,” Mosa said.
“The seismic [of the exploration prospect] shows that it is significant. If it is as per the seismic, it will be very economical to produce and develop.”
The UAE as a whole is boosting its gas production and made another major discovery in 2020 besides Mahani in Sharjah.
Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, the UAE’s biggest energy company, and gas supplier Dubai Supply Authority will develop a new shallow gas reservoir with estimated in-place gas resources of 80 Tcf that was discovered along the Dubai-Abu Dhabi border in 2020.
Eni operates in offshore areas of Abu Dhabi and Ras Al Khaimah, another UAE emirate. Eni produced 4 Bcf of gas and 17 million barrels of oil and condensate in 2020 from its UAE operations.
