Gulf State Bahrain announced on Wednesday it has made its biggest oil discovery in 86 years, an estimated 80 billion barrels of shale oil and estimated 13.7 trillion cubic feet of gas. The discovery was made Sunday off the islands west coast.
Gulf State Bahrain announced on Wednesday it has made its biggest oil discovery in 86 years, an estimated 80 billion barrels of shale oil and estimated 13.7 trillion cubic feet of gas. The discovery was made Sunday off the islands west coast.
The field covers 2,000 square kilometres (772 square miles) in shallow waters off the kingdom’s west coast. The new field would dwarf the country’s only other oil field, Bahrain Field, which contains several hundred million barrels.
“The other discovery is tight gas discovery and we’re in the final stages of evaluating it with Schlumberger and Halliburton,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s oil minister told reporters in Manama.
Bahrain’s discovery , which is the first find since oil was first struck in 1932. The discovery is one of the largest new finds of hydrocarbons reserves in the Arabian Gulf region. The discovery is a timely one with the Kingdom debt saddled with public debt set to reach 100 per cent of GDP by 2019, according to forecasts by Moody’s Investors Service.
This has also brought great scepticism to the validity of the size of the find. The actual impact of the discovery is contingent on how much of it is actually extractable. Yahya al-Ansari, exploration manager at Bahrain’s national oil company Bapco, said that pumping of oil from the field is not expected for at least five years.
Much of the island’s current output comes from the offshore Abu Safa oil field, which it shares with Saudi Arabia. Production from the onshore Bahrain Field, the site of the first ever oil well spudded in the Gulf states, currently stands at around 50,000 barrels per day. International consultants DeGolyer and MacNaughton, Halliburton, and Schlumberger are heading the project with Bahrain’s National Oil and Gas Authority.
From the Traders Community News Desk