The Kashagan field is planned to increase the injection of associated gas into oil reservoirs in the fall of this year.
As the Vice Minister of Energy of Kazakhstan Magzum Mirzagaliyev said last Friday, this is planned to be achieved by transferring two wells from the producing to the injection mode. “This will achieve a target production level of 370,000 barrels per day (13 million tons per year),” the Vice Minister said.
“If we understand that the reservoir actually takes in associated gas and there are no problems, then approximately in the autumn we will begin to transfer two oil wells from the producing to the injection mode. That is, associated gas will be injected into these wells. Accordingly, this will give us a certain increase in production,” said Murgum Mirzagaliyev.
It should be noted that according to the initial plans of the NCOC consortium developing the Kashagan field, it was planned to reach the level of 370,000 barrels per day by the end of 2017. However, due to problems with injection capacity of the reservoir, technical difficulties arose.
In mid-March, the operator stopped a number of wells for the extraction and injection of gas into the reservoir, and production at Kashagan reduced from 300,000 barrels to 214,000 barrels per day (as of April 6).
Production at the field was started in late September 2016. As the General Director of the CTC, Nikolai Gorban, reported, this year it is planned to almost double the intake of oil from Kashagan – up to 13 million tons.
In 2016, Kashagan produced slightly more than 1 million tons of oil, and in 2017 it produced 8.35 million tons. The forecast for oil production in Kashagan for 2018 is 10.
