| Rhourde El Baguel Oil Field | |
|---|---|
| Country | Algeria |
| Region | Ouargla Province |
| Location | Rhourde El Baguel |
| Offshore/onshore | onshore |
| Operators | BP 30% - Sonatrach 70% |
| Partners | Sonatrach-BP |
| Field history | |
| Discovery | 1963 |
| Start of development | 1996 |
| Start of production | 1963 |
| Peak year | 1995 |
| Production | |
| Current production of oil | 20,000 barrels per day (~10.0×105 t/a) |
| Estimated oil in place | 410 million tonnes (~ 500×106 m3 or 3000 MMbbl) |
Rhourde El Baguel Oil Field (REB) is an oil field located in Ouargla Province, Algeria. It was discovered in 1963 by Edward Chittick under Sinclair International and developed by ARCO (now part of BP) and Sonatrach in 1996. API oil (40.2 Deg) is produced from a Cambrian formation at a depth of 9,850 feet (3,000 m).
Ouargla or Warqla is a province (wilaya) in eastern Algeria. Its capital is Ouargla. Other localities include Touggourt, and Hassi Messaoud. It contains the Issaouane Erg desert.
Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. The capital and most populous city is Algiers, located in the far north of the country on the Mediterranean coast. With an area of 2,381,741 square kilometres (919,595 sq mi), Algeria is the tenth-largest country in the world, the world's largest Arab country, and the largest in Africa. Algeria is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia, to the east by Libya, to the west by Morocco, to the southwest by the Western Saharan territory, Mauritania, and Mali, to the southeast by Niger, and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. The country is a semi-presidential republic consisting of 48 provinces and 1,541 communes (counties). It has the highest human development index of all non-island African countries.
Atlantic Richfield Company is an American oil company with operations in the United States, Indonesia, the North Sea, the South China Sea, and Mexico. It has more than 1,300 gas stations in the western part of the United States, and recently five gas stations at northwestern Mexico. ARCO was formed by the merger of East Coast–based Atlantic Refining and California-based Richfield Oil Corporation in 1966. A merger in 1969 brought in Sinclair Oil Corporation. In the 1970s and 80s, ARCO was one of the largest companies in the world, consistently a top 20 company of the Fortune 500. After its subsequent fracture in the late 1980s and early 90s, ARCO became a subsidiary of UK-based BP plc in 2000 through its BP West Coast Products LLC (BPWCP) affiliate. On August 13, 2012, it was announced that Tesoro would purchase ARCO and its refinery for $2.5 billion. However, the deal came under fire due to increasing fuel prices. Many activists urged state and federal regulators to block the sale due to concerns that it would reduce competition and could lead to higher fuel prices at ARCO stations. On June 3, 2013, BP sold ARCO and the Carson Refinery to Tesoro for $2.5 billion. BP sold its Southern California terminals to Tesoro Logistics LP, including the Carson Storage Facility. BP will continue to own the ampm brand and sell it to Tesoro for Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada. BP exclusively licensed the ARCO rights from Tesoro for Northern California, Oregon, and Washington.
It is the second largest field in Algeria. REB's recovery rate declined to 18% of its maximum by 1995. In 1996, it was producing less than 25,000 barrels per day. On February 15, 1996, ARCO signed a 25-year production sharing contract (PSC) valued at $1.3 billion with Algeria. In 1995 it paid a signature bonus of $225m and agreed to pay a $300m entrance fee. It was to invest in an enhanced oil recovery system and further development, including 38 new wells, [1] but this work did not take place.[ citation needed ]
Enhanced oil recovery, also called tertiary recovery, is the extraction of crude oil from an oil field that cannot be extracted otherwise. EOR can extract 30% to 60% or more of a reservoir's oil, compared to 20% to 40% using primary and secondary recovery. According to the US Department of Energy, there are three primary techniques for EOR: thermal, gas injection, and chemical injection. More advanced, speculative EOR techniques are sometimes called quaternary recovery.
After acquiring ARCO, BP raised the field's output by gas injection to 85,000 b/d peak for a few months in early 2000. Encouraged by this success, BP decided to increase the pressure of the injected gas to optimize the production. This led to a total failure and cracks inside the field. Its sustainable capacity was never more than 18,000 b/d. As of 2011, production averaged 20,000 b/d. The EOR technique failed due to the existence of cracks in the bottom well rock formation that led to the loss of the majority of the oil reserves.
BP and Sonatrach are going through arbitration over the objectives that were initially set in the PSC and never met by BP.
Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), is a way to resolve disputes outside the courts. The dispute will be decided by one or more persons, which renders the "arbitration award". An arbitration award is legally binding on both sides and enforceable in the courts.
The total proven reserves of field are around 3 billion barrels (410 million tonnes). [2]
Proven reserves, also called measured reserves, 1P, and reserves, are industry specific terms regarding fossil fuel energy sources. They are defined as a "Quantity of energy sources estimated with reasonable certainty, from the analysis of geologic and engineering data, to be recoverable from well established or known reservoirs with the existing equipment and under the existing operating conditions." A reserve is considered a proven reserve if it is probable that 90% or more of the resource is recoverable while being economically profitable. These terms relate to common fossil fuel reserves such as oil reserves, natural gas reserves, or coal reserves.
