Barzan Gas Project Completes Offshore Drilling

RasGas Company has safely and successfully completed offshore drilling for 30 development wells for the $10.3bn Barzan Gas Project, paving the way for subsequent phases of the project to proceed with connecting the wells to subsea pipelines that will take gas to shore.

The 30 development wells – spread over three offshore wellhead platforms – have a total length of approximately 138 kilometres and reach more than 3,000 metres below the sea’s surface.

The complex Barzan offshore drilling operations required three jack-up drilling rigs working for a combined total of 4,740 days and involving more than 300 employees at any given time working in challenging offshore conditions.

Dave Frye, Chief Subsurface and Technology Officer, said “Highly sophisticated drilling technologies and techniques such as a Pressurized Mud Cap Drilling technique were successfully employed to address unique technical challenges allowing the wells to be drilled safely and efficiently.”

“Completion of the offshore drilling takes the country’s landmark energy project one step closer to completion. Construction of Barzan Gas Project onshore facilities recently surpassed the 50% completion mark. The next significant step will be to connect the project pipelines running from Ras Laffan to the wells located 80km off the coast of Qatar,” said Nafez Bseiso, RasGas Chief Venture Officer.

“While the Barzan Gas Project is a prime example of Qatar’s push for sustainable development, it is also a demonstration of RasGas’ commitment to high safety standards and operational excellence,” he added.

As of July, 2013, the Venture Project Team reached an unprecedented 78 million hours worked without a lost time incident (LTI). This milestone achievement surpasses all previous performance in the State of Qatar.

“Successfully and safely executing projects of the scale of Barzan requires organization and teamwork. The team is effectively coordinating a multi-national workforce of more than 25,000 staff across a three square kilometer site, often in challenging conditions and working at a rate of over 1.5 million work-hours per week,” Bseiso said.

Qatar Petroleum (QP) formally acknowledged the project’s impressive safety performance by awarding the Barzan Onshore EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) main contractor, JGC Corporation, the 2012 QP Safety Excellence Award for the Oil & Gas Industry earlier this year.

RasGas was appointed by shareholders, Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil, to execute the Barzan Gas Project and operate the facilities, one of the largest and technologically advanced gas processing plants in the region. When the two trains are in operation, RasGas’ facilities (LNG and pipeline sales gas) will have a total production capacity of around 11 billion standard cubic feet of gas per day (the equivalent of almost two million barrels of oil per day) making RasGas one of the world’s largest single gas processor.