In Shell’s preparation to implement Phase 3 of its Malampaya platform (pictured above), the group employed the same workers that worked on the Gumusut-Kakap project.
PASAY, the Philippines: Advancements are constantly being made in the oil and gas (O&G) deepwater development as exemplified by Royal Dutch Shell plc’s (Shell) efforts in the region.
An example of Shell’s deepwater progress in Malaysia is the Gumusut-Kakap floating platform offshore Sabah, whereby the group began oil production in October this year.
Once fully ramped up, this platform will reach an annual peak production of about 135,000 barrels of oil per day.
In the Philippines, Shell has made deepwater progress via the Malampaya gas-to-power project, a private-public partnership between Shell (45 per cent), Chevron (45 per cent) and the Philippine National Oil Company Exploration Corporation (10 per cent).
Shell is the main operator of this project.
Gas derived from this deepwater field supplies 30 per cent of Luzon grid’s requirements.
“The challenge for deepwater projects is making it competitive and affordable,” highlighted Delton Sy, Shell Philippines Exploration BV field development manager during a media briefing here recently.
Sy said three criteria Shell adopted to make its projects competitive is the people, innovation, and standardisation and replication.
“In 2012, Shell formed a global projects community organisation called projects and technology, delivering capital projects both upstream and downstream – all the way from concept selection to fabrication and delivery of assets,” he further explained.
“There about 3,700 project professionals located in hubs all over the world.
They compare projects all over the world and gets undergoes to ensure they done best in their scenarios and help them to work more effectively.
“This creates an integrated engineering environment so that everything is together: systems in place, they can track costs, progress and project delivery.” Sy added that standardisation and replication is done to ensure success other projects worldwide.
For example, in Shell’s preparation to implement Phase 3 of its Malampaya platform by next year, Shell they employed the same workers employed at Gumusut-Kakap.
“Standardisation will become even more important as the deepwater industry becomes more global.
“Transfer of the latest technology, development concepts and equipment designs in parallel with the application of best practices in project management, contracting, procurement and project execution will speed up deepwater projects in new provinces and help to raise their local content quickly.
“This helps people to develop deepwater project execution skills, and share in other countries their deepwater capability and global competitiveness,” Sy added.
This method of technology replication was also adopted by Shell in its Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) plant from its Bintulu plant in Sarawak to the Pearl GTL plant in Qatar.
Meanwhile, Graeme Smith, Shell vice president of exploration Asia, affirmed that its exploration and production strategy in Southeast Asia remains focused offshore.
“We will preserve certain amount in budget for newfield exploration — which is easier and has a higher success rate — but usually contains lower volumes,” he said.
Graeme affirmed that Shell continues to look at exploration opportunities in the Philippines with hopes of possibly finding another “Malampaya gas field”.
“We’re always looking. My job is to look at all opportunities available. In the Philippines, there is still oil and gas, but whether or not it’s enough, we don’t know,” he added.