John Malcolm, the Managing Director of Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), took advantage of the opening session of the Oil & Gas West Asia (OGWA) conference to describe the strategy that PDO has embarked on. The OGWA conference, which has the theme "Exploring New Opportunities in Energy-rich Arabia", was officially opened by HE Dr Mohammed bin Hamed al Rumhy, Minister of Oil & Gas, and Chairman of the Board of PDO, in the presence of a number of high-ranking Government officials and other distinguished guests. Mr Malcolm followed HE the Minister with a presentation entitled 'Ensuring Sustainability'. "PDO's shareholders have had to carefully re-think how best to apportion PDO's capital and human resources in order to maximize the value of its hydrocarbon reserves in the short term, in the medium term and the in long term - all at the same time," explained Mr Malcolm. "In the short term, by which I mean over the next five years, we look to produce oil and gas in as cost-efficient a way as possible from our existing fields according to existing development plans. That's why it is imperative that we drill and complete wells and construct and commission facilities on time and on budget. But we must be careful not to devote too much of our capital and human resources on the short term, because we also need to prepare ourselves now to maximise the value of our hydrocarbons later. We have to devote some resources over the next 10 years to properly plan conventional field developments as well as enhanced oil recovery projects, so that we can replace the reserves that will be produced in the short term." Finally, we can't neglect the long term, by which I mean the timeframe, say, beyond 2015. We have to devote some resources now to search for hydrocarbons; we are confident that there are still some oil and gas fields out there that remain to be discovered. And we must also devote some resources to 'mature' - that is, bring into production - the hydrocarbons that could add significantly to our production in the long-term future."
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