Dubai — Petroleum Development Oman, the largest oil producer in the sultanate, is looking to raise its crude output capacity by around 13% to 680,000 b/d over the coming years, managing director Raoul Restucci said Tuesday.
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Register Now"Soon, we are going to the board to talk about 680,000 b/d, over the next three to four years," Restucci was quoted as saying by the Oman Observer.
PDO is a joint venture of the Omani government (60%), Shell (34%), Total (4%) and Partex (2%), operating a concession area covering almost a third of the country.
Last year, the company produced an average of 582,196 b/d of crude, nearly half Oman's total output.
PDO has plans $20 billion spend over the next four years to sustain its long-term oil and gas production.
One of its most important projects is the Yibal Khuff sour oil and gas development, which it hopes to start up in 2021, adding 10,000 b/d of oil, PDO said in March. PDO's second mega-project -- the Rabab Harweel integrated project in the southern Omani desert -- is expected to be completed in 2019, adding 6 MMcf/d of sweet gas, and another 60,000 b/d of oil.
Oman's crude oil and condensate production has been rising steadily over the last few months, reaching 975,500 b/d in July, its highest so far this year, according to the latest data from the ministry of oil and gas.
The sultanate had cut production by 50,000 b/d from 1.019 million b/d to 969,000 b/d, under the OPEC/non-OPEC production cut deal in December 2016. The producer group agreed in June to raise their collective output by 1 million b/d.
Oman is one of the few non-OPEC producers besides Russia which has some spare production capacity. Salim al-Aufi, Oman's undersecretary of oil and gas, said earlier this month, it would increase output over the next six months, though he did not provide a target.
--Adal Mirza, adal.mirza@spglobal.com
--Edited by Jonathan Dart, newsdesk@spglobal.com