The Oil and Gas Middle East website has shared its annual ranking, naming engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firms that are making the biggest impact in the Middle East oil and gas industry, the Oil Ministry news agency Shana reported.
Included in this year’s list are EPC contractors ranked as per criteria including financial status, planned and existing projects, corporate social responsibility and contractors’ presence in the strategic Middle East.
OIEC is 20th on the list. It is involved in the Azar Oil Field development near the Iran-Iraq border and should produce 65,000 barrels per day.
Azar Oilfield is located in Anaran block bordering Iraq in Mehran, lIam Province. It holds 2.5 billion barrels of in-place oil, but new reservoir studies suggest it could produce four billion barrels. It is one of the six joint fields with Iraq, along with Dehloran, West Paydar, Naft-Shahr, Azadegan and Yadavaran.
The field is not an easy catch. It is considered a drillers' nightmare given the sequence of its low- and high-pressure layers, and the large number of tubes for drilling and lining of wells. Hydraulic fracturing initially was a big challenge for the field that was resolved with acid fracturing, a popular method for improving oil recovery.
The field's crude oil API, a measure of how heavy or light petroleum liquids are compared to water, stands at 33, which ranks it among medium grade crudes.
OIEC is a leading private engineering, procurement and construction company active in exploration and production, upstream services and energy trade.
Founded in 1987, the company has taken major steps to offer a complete range of EPC services. Today it is considered as one of the prominent players in the oil and gas industry.
Its activities include operation of oil and gas refineries and pipelines, and petrochemical plants
The company is also involved in the development of onshore and offshore fields by providing services including exploration studies and drilling wells.
The first rank in the list for the top 30 contractors in the Middle East is the UAE’s National Petroleum Construction Company. In November 2019, it invested $89.8 million on a vessel, the Delma 2000, for global deep-water projects, aiming to expand its offering.
After the NPCC, the top ten EPC contractors includes India’s Larsen & Toubro Hydrocarbon Engineering, the Uk’s Petrofac, Panamanian-domiciled McDermott International, the UK’s Wood, Canada’s SNC-Lavalin, Australia’s Worley, Italy’s Saipem, the UK’s TechnipFMC, and the US’s KBR, which are placed 2nd to 10th respectively.
Oil and Gas Middle East is a pre-eminent website focused on the upstream oil and gas industry in the Middle East.