Kuwait adds Samsung to Wara injection prequalifiers

01 March 2011

Delayed water-injection scheme will maintain production levels at the Burgan reservoir

State-upstream operator Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has added South Korea’s Samsung Engineering to its list of firms prequalified to bid for an estimated $500m water injection contract at the Wara field in southeast Kuwait.

Bids will be submitted on 27 March, an extension of two weeks from the original 13 March 2011 deadline.

KOC prequalified 16 firms in October for the scheme, which will provide pressure support for the Wara formation in the Burgan oilfield, the world’s second-largest oil reservoir (MEED 17:10:10).

KOC plans to build water collection, treatment and injection facilities to pump as much as 1 million barrels a day (b/d) of water into the Wara geological formation to maintain reservoir pressure and production levels at the field.

The winning contractor will build a water treatment plant with 10 water treatment units, 60 pumps and 700 kilometres of pipelines, with diameters varying from six to 30 inches. It will also include 20 tanks capable of holding between 10,000 to 240,000 barrels.

The greater Burgan area contains about 70 billion barrels of oil, but production has dropped to 1.7 million b/d, compared with 2.4 million b/d in 1972. Without action some analysts believe this could fall to as low as 1.5 million b/d by 2020.

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