More on North Azadegan Field

Among oil fields in the oil-rich West Karoun area, Azadegan enjoys special conditions mainly due to its size and being shared with Iraq. It is one of largest oil fields in the world that was discovered in the 1990s. Azadegan is a main oil exploration in Iran over the past quarter a century.

The fields jointly owned by Iran and Iraq on the western bank of Karoun River stretch from Koushk to Hosseinieh areas.

According to latest estimates, there are 70 billion barrels of oil in pace in West Karoun. This figure is very significant for petroleum engineers in the world. That is why Iran's future petroleum industry plans for oil production enhancement would be focused on the development of these fields.

Meantime, the shared status of these fields is of high significance for our country. At present, international oil companies operating in Iraq are highly willing to recover oil from these fields.

Geologically speaking, Azadegan is overall an oil field. But it was divided into North Azadegan and South Azadegan following talks with Japan's Inpex some 15 years ago. The Japanese firm agreed with National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to develop South Azadegan. But the northern section, which is located in Hoor area, remained undeveloped until it was awarded to Chinese companies. Therefore, North Azadegan and South Azadegan were just divisions for development project.

Cluster Drilling

An outstanding feature of South Azadegan oil field development is the location of a large segment of this field in Hoor al-Azim area. The reason is that most of oil wells spudded in this field are offshore. If access was supposed to be provided to each and every of 58 wells drilled in Phase 1 development of this field in order to install an independent derrick the lagoon would disappear. Therefore, in a bid to prevent the destruction of the environment in this area, huge efforts were put into the project. A good measure in this field was cluster drilling of wells. That is to say, in a location, instead of drilling a single well, five directional wells were spudded with a distance of 50 meters from one another. That was meant for the development of North Azadegan field with minimum destructive impact on the environment. In the end, 58 wells were drilled in this field in 23 spots. The important point that must be taken into consideration when drilling rigs are to be located is that no section's access to water should be cut when access roads are being constructed.

In West Karoun area, sedimentary layers and formation of oil fields and reservoirs are geologically uniform. In other words, Gadvan, Gajdami, Sarvak and Fahlian are similar sedimentary layers in this area. Sarvak layer, containing 90% of the total reserves of this area, has the heaviest crude oil in the least deep layer in the area. It might be interesting to know that the depth of this layer is below 3,000 meters.

There are important vertical and horizontal geological changes when we move from south to north in North Azadegan oil field. Due to these changes, we have API 16 oil in Sarvak layer in the south of the field and API 24 oil in the northern part of the field. But generally speaking the viscosity of crude oil in this field is on average below 20.

The existence of crude oil in this field makes processing, desalting and its transport more complicated than in other fields. According to plans made for Phase 1, all oil would be produced from Sarvak layer.

Azadegan oil field expands on a total area of 45 kilometers in length and 30 kilometers in width.

Outstanding Features

It might be interesting to take a look at measures that were first undertaken in West Karoun. One of major activities that might have been unprecedented for an oil field in the country has been the establishment of semi-industrial pilot for enhanced recovery in North Azadegan field. For that purpose, three wells were drilled, and in case the findings are supportive this system will be put into operation in the next phases of the field, too.

Another special measure with regard to the Phase 1 development of North Azadegan field was the record set for the duration of drilling. The time envisaged for drilling of each well was 120 days. The average time needed for drilling each well is 115 days. There were for example wells whose drilling lasted 82 days and those whose drilling lasted 120 days. Generally speaking, the average drilling time in North Azadegan was five days earlier than the time initially envisaged for that purpose. The wells spudded in North Azadegan are horizontal, vertical and directional. In horizontal drilling, a new system known as gas lifting was applied and the gas pressure in the reservoir was managed.

Environmental Requirements

All environmental requirements were observed. Through insulation, we prevented the flow of oil wastes into Hoor al-Azim Lagoon. No drilling cut was buried well-head and all cuts were taken to spots specified by the Department of the Environment. In certain cases we had to lengthen the drilling so that more wells would not be needed to be drilled. The Chinese contractor was obligated to apply an appropriate system for the management of wastes and we even delayed the project several months in order to receive some permits from the Department of the Environment.

Another important event with regard to North Azadegan was the compilation of a new master development plan (MDP) for boosting and covering Phase 2 development plan. Although the foreign contractor was obligated to handle this task, Iran's Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC) set up a committee to handle this job. With the help of Iranian and foreign experts, PEDEC drew up a comprehensive MDP for Phase 1 and a roadmap for Phase 2 development, which were endorsed by the CEO of NIOC. An advantage of this MDP was that the Chinese contractor accepted to keep production stable for five years.

Regarding commodity and equipment, efforts were undertaken to observe the petroleum industry standards and more than 50% of the needs of the project were supplied by Iranian manufacturers and contractors. For drilling, in addition to a Chinese contractor, National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC) and Dana Energy company were called in.

JMC Role in North Azadegan Development

An important issue which largely contributed to the development of West Karoun oil fields, particularly North Azadegan, was the establishment of Joint Management Committee (JMC). This committee is tasked with managing the project. Like the Board of Directors, it can make decisions for the project. But such decisions need the approval of the NIOC Board of Directors and have to respect a ceiling. JMC advises the NIOC Board of Directors on a variety of issues like Capex and MDP. It also settles disputes that might arise between the client and the contractor.

JMC was largely involved in the development of North Azadegan field. For instance, open capex was a major issue in this development project that was based on a buyback deal.

By the end of every year, JMC holds meetings in a bid to make an assessment of costs throughout the year and estimate the budget needed for the follo