BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov. 13
By Fakhri Vakilov-Trend:
The reserves of the most difficult Mingbulak oil field in Uzbekistan’s Namangan region turned out to be unprofitable in production, said Uzbekistan’s Deputy Minister of Energy Sherzod Khodjaev, Trend reports citing Uzbek media.
“Oil production in Mingbulak field is technically feasible, but economically inexpedient. However, we are sure that technologies will rapidly become cheaper in a year or two, and we will be able to begin commercial development and operation of this field,” he said.
In May of this year, the joint venture Mingbulakneft with the participation of Uzbekneftegaz and China's CNPC received the first oil at the field. Seven possibly productive horizons were tested at M-15 Mingbulak well, of which oil and gas inflows were obtained at four objects and reservoir water inflows at three.
According to experts, the field is very complex. The main problems during its development are large depths (up to 6 km and more), high reservoir pressure (more than 115 MPa), as well as reservoir temperatures.
In Oct. 2011, CNPC and Uzbekneftegaz signed an agreement on the basic principles of cooperation on the joint development of the Mingbulak field. The Chinese side planned to invest $255 million in development with access to a design capacity of up to 200,000 tons of oil per year.
The Mingbulak field was discovered in 1992. According to Uzbekneftegaz, the total recoverable reserves of the field are about 2 million tons.
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