OMV Petrom Explores New Oil Fields in Southern Romania
The Romanian OMV Petrom (controlled by the Austrian oil company OMV) has explored new oil and gas fields in the regions of Oltenia and Muntenia in southern Romania.
This is stated in a message published on June 13 on the company’s website.
Theses OMV Petrom:
- Collectively, discovered fields contain more than 30 million boe of recoverable resources, which corresponds to about 3/4 of OMV Petrom’s production in 2022;
- exploratory drilling and testing of these 3 wells was carried out from June 2022 to April 2023;
- the company invested about 20 million euros.
As shallow as the company, the Verguleas (Oltenia) field was the largest in decades, adding 20 million boe to the company’s reserves. The discovered oil resources at the Targovishte exploration block are estimated at 6 million boe, and pre-operational work is currently underway at the facility. A third discovery was made in the Targu Jiu exploration block, where natural gas resources of 7 million boe have been discovered, equivalent to almost 1/3 of Romania’s natural gas production in 2022. The company plans to drill 1 more well on this block in 2024.
As a reminder, on December 14, 2022, it became known that OMV Petrom and Romgaz submitted documents to the Romanian Mineral Resources Agency for the Neptun project on the Black Sea shelf.
The companies have sent a statement to the regulator about the commercial feasibility of developing the field, which formally moves the project from exploration status to the next stage. But OMV Petrom, which is the operator of the project, said it would not make a final investment decision (FID) until mid-2023, when it is awaiting clarification from the Romanian government regarding the offshore gas law. The company explained that the declaration of commercial discovery is an intermediate step in the process of accepting the FID and starting development. If the FID is accepted within the specified period, the first gas from the project is expected in 2027. OMV Petrom estimates the total investment in the development of the project at 4 billion euros.
The Neptun project is located in the deep water sector of the Black Sea (depth – 100-1700 m).
The area of the block is 7.5 thousand km².
In 2008-2016 a large amount of 3D seismic survey was carried out on the block and 8 exploration and appraisal wells were drilled, most of them gave a steady gas flow. The gas reserves of the Neptun field are estimated at 42-84 billion m³, the expected production volume is 6 billion m³/year of gas.
