Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) plans to spend $30bn over the next 10 years to maintain its current levels of oil production, according to the company’s technical director.

The state-backed oil company is planning to invest more than $1bn on each of three onshore megaprojects, Rabab Harweel Integrated, Yibal Khuff and Budour, which will help maintain PDO’s capacity at about 550,000 barrels a day (b/d).

“Those projects are going to be coming to an investment decision over the next few years,” said PDO technical director Amran Marhubi speaking at the MEED Oman Investment Forum in Muscat.

 “Our largest project will implement groundbreaking enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques,” he added. “These include steam injection, chemical injection and sour gas injection. By the end of this decade, PDO will be a world leader in EOR.”

Marhubi said that new projects will develop nearly 200,000 b/d of new capacity, which will offset the natural decline of the sultanate’s oil fields.

The phase two developments at the Harweel fields in Dhofar, southern Oman, have not yet reached full capacity. “[The project] should have started 2008-09. It is not yet at full capacity because of technical issues, but we will reach the target,” Marhubi said.

PDO is a joint venture of the Omani government, UK/Dutch Shell Group, France’s Total and Portugal-based Partex. The company produces about 550,000 b/d out of Oman’s total crude output of 900,000 b/d, Marhubi said.