Contractors greatly reduce upstream activities in revised WP&B

By Febry Silaban

Oil and gas contractors will greatly reduce their activities this year to cope with the sharp drop in oil and gas prices in their revised 2015 Work Program & Budget (WP&B) filed with upstream authority SKK Migas.

Deputy Planning Control of SKK Migas Gunawan Sutadiwirja told Petromindo.com that based on the revised 2015 WP&B, drilling of exploration wells has been cut from the initial plan of 205 wells to 184 wells this year, development wells from 778 wells to 603 wells, and on work-over activities from 1,392 wells to 1,354 wells.

According to Gunawan, state owned oil and gas firm PT Pertamina (Persero) is among companies most aggressively cutting their activities. The number of drilling the firm has decided to postpone reaches almost 100 wells.

Meanwhile, he added, this year the 2D seismic survey activities will increase from 2,388 km to 96,012 km, but the 3D seismic survey will decrease from 7,588 sqkm to 5,995 sqkm.

"In line with the weakening of oil prices, our oil lifting this year is predicted to fall by about 22,000 bopd from the previous forecast of 850,000 bopd to 828,000 bopd. While the gas lifting is also projected to fall by 190 mmscfd from an earlier projection of 6,592 mmscfd to 6,402 mmscfd," he explained.

As a result of the reduced activities, the value of investment in upstream sector is projected to fall by US$3.4 billion, from the initial plan of $23.6 billion to $20.2 billion, Gunawan said.

Editing by Johannes Simbolon