Petronas is understood to have picked the Malaysian unit of France’s Technip to carry out a conceptual study on a potential offshore processing solution for its multi-billion dollar K5 high carbon dioxide gas field development off Sarawak.
The offshore option will be compared with an alternative study that focuses on onshore processing of the field’s output.
Technip will carry out the offshore processing study, which is expected to last at least six months, in Malaysia on a proposed multi-platform development to separate CO2 from K5 gas after it is extracted for re-injection into producing or depleted oil and gas fields up to 250 kilometres away from Bintulu.
This option involves the construction and installation of a central processing platform, two gas compression platforms and two wellhead platforms, according to sources.
The engineering work to be carried out by Technip in Kuala Lumpur will run concurrently with a 15-month joint study Petronas and France’s Total have been undertaking in Paris on an earlier proposal to gather the K5 gas at an offshore platform for transport to an onshore facility 230 kilometres away near the Bintulu liquefied natural gas plant.
Under this first plan, the CO2 stripped out from the gas would then be re-exported to the offshore fields between 200 and 250 kilometres away from Bintulu.
The results of the parallel studies will serve as the basis for drawing up a field development plan as well as any further negotiations between Petronas and Total on a production sharing contract for K5.
Gas from the shallow-water discovery contains about 70% CO2, but industry estimates place its recoverable resources at between 3 trillion cubic feet and 4 Tcf.
CO2 extracted from K5 is understood to be intended for re-injection into three fields — Jintan, Seria and M4.
Jintan and Seria lie in Block SK-8 and have been developed via tiebacks to the M1 and M3 complexes, respectively.
M4 is a depleted gas field that has been flagged up as a potential candidate for CO2 sequestration.
Upstream understands the parallel studies will also look at reinjecting CO2 in an unidentified field about 50 kilometres away from Bintulu to boost hydrocarbon recovery.
K5 stands as potentially the gas field with the highest CO2 content to be developed commercially in Malaysia.
The 1970 discovery came in top on recoverable hydrocarbon resources among 10 fields studied in 2006 for CO2 extraction off Sarawak.
Petronas is expected to follow up with a front-end engineering and design competition on the pioneering high CO2 gas field development-cum-carbon sequestration project as early as the second half of this year.
Gas from K5 will be exported to the Bintulu liquefied natural gas complex, currently undergoing expansion to add a ninth train with 3.6 million tonnes per annum processing capacity.
Petronas is believed to be looking at adding two further trains to the Bintulu complex now boasting nameplate capacity of 25.7 million tpa.