Category: Oil and Gas business

Established in 1972 and is responsible for the management of oil and gas exploration and production activities on behalf of the State of Tunisia

Where the Commissioner, after consultation with the Authority, holds that petroleum is being produced from a well at a gas/oil ratio excessive under the prevailing circumstances, he may require the reduction of such gas/oil ratio to such reasonable extent and within such reasonable time as he may specify

Applying enhanced oil recovery techniques to mature oil fields, such as through waterflooding, to recover additional reserves or prolong production after primary recovery methods have run their course. By increasing production efficiency, EOR methods can prolong the economic life of older fields by as much as 30 years. Three major categories of EOR have been found to be commercially successful to varying degrees: (1) Thermal recovery, which involves the introduction of heat such as the injection of steam to lower the viscosity, or thin, the heavy viscous oil, and improve its ability to flow through the reservoir; (2) Gas injection, which uses gases such as natural gas, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide that expand in a reservoir to push additional oil to a production wellbore, or other gases that dissolve in the oil to lower its viscosity and improves its flow rate; (3) Chemical injection, which can involve the use of long-chained molecules called polymers to increase the effectiveness of waterfloods, or the use of detergent-like surfactants to help lower the surface tension that often prevents oil droplets from moving through a reservoir. Chemical techniques account for less than one percent of US EOR production. Each of these techniques has been hampered by its relatively high cost and, in some cases, by the unpredictability of its effectiveness.

The IEA (2009) esteems that the era of cheap oil has passed and that prices will soon revert to $100 a barrel leading to a price tag of $200 a barrel by 2030. The main reason for this being that oil and gas companies will find it increasingly difficult to extract enough oil to make up for the decrease productivity of mature oil fields. The oil industry will have to invest $350 billion dollars each year until 2030 in order to overcome the sharp decrease in productivity of the existing oil wells and to discover new fields. The IEA believes that output from the world’s oil fields is declining at 9%. This problem is magnified as the oil giants are pulling out of projects in places like Kazakhstan and Canada as the low price means costly excavations are no longer viable. The IEA estimates that firms like Shell and BP need to invest $350bn a year to replace older wells as well as meet demand from fast growing economies like China.

An EFS allows market participants to exchange a position in the Henry Hub natural gas futures contract for a cash-settled position instead of physical gas. EFS transactions are permitted until two hours after trading terminates in the underlying Henry Hub natural gas futures contract. There is an exchange fee of $2.50 per side for each EFS transaction

The process of denudation of rocks, including physical, chemical and biological breakdown and transportation. In drilling it can refer to the wearing away of rock by a continuous abrasive action

When companies swap quantities of gas, from different locations, or different development times. A type of energy exchange in which one company agrees to deliver gas, either directly or through intermediaries, to another company at one location or in one time period in exchange for the delivery by the second company to the first company of an equivalent volume or heat content at a different location or time period. Note: Such agreements may or may not include the payment of fees in dollar or volumetric amounts.

In an oil and gas JOA, entitlement refers to that quantity of petroleum (excluding all quantities used or lost in joint operations) of which a party has the right and obligation to take delivery pursuant to the terms of the agreement, as such rights and obligations may be adjusted by the terms of any lifting, balancing and other disposal agreements entered into