Bahrain aims to bring shale oil project online by 2023

Bahrain aims to bring shale oil project online by 2023

MANAMA: Bahrain remains on pace to bring online its offshore shale reserves by 2023, although a final investment decision and outside investor interest is still a work in progress. Oil and gas minister Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa said the project remained in the test drilling phase and results were too preliminary to determine a potential maximum production rate at this time. “Initially, when we started in 2018, we said five years, so we should be ready by then,” he said during a webinar hosted by the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “What we need to prove first is the geological and technical viability. Once we get there, hopefully, we will have investors.” In 2018, Bahrain first revealed the extensive Khaleej Al Bahrain reservoir off the west coast, which could contain approximately 80 billion barrels of tight oil – the kingdom’s largest oil discovery since the 1930s. The oil and gas ministry has said it is targeting producing up to 200,000 barrels per day (bpd), though the resources are likely to be technically challenging to develop. This would double Bahrain’s current crude output, which averaged 180,000 bpd last month, according to the S&P Global Platts’ survey of OPEC+