Shell Development Oman recently held a ceremony to celebrate the success of four Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) teams in Shell’s international “Impact Awards”, which is an annual recognition programme celebrating teams in Shell and affiliated companies who find smart ways to do things more safely, efficiently and cost consciously in upstream oil and gas projects.

The Oman event was hosted by Chris Breeze, Shell’s Country Chairman, and attended by Abdul-Amir Al Ajmi, External Affairs and Value Creation Director of PDO, members of the four PDO winning teams, as well as Shell and PDO staff and management.

The four winning PDO teams were among 62 nominated projects from the Company, where each nomination represented an occasion when colleagues felt inspired enough to nominate projects that have delivered exceptional results that can be replicated across Shell’s global operations.  One winner was in the category for Production Optimization, another winner was in the category for Safety and Environment, while another two winners were part of the People category.

The Miraah project, the joint venture project between PDO and GlassPoint Solar, won the Safety and Environment category. In its full capacity, Miraah will produce more than 6,000 tons of solar steam daily for oil production and create new opportunities in supply chain development, manufacturing, and employment to diversify Oman’s economy. By using solar instead of burning gas to make steam for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), Miraah will reduce CO2 emissions by more than 300,000 tons each year. These carbon savings are equivalent to taking 63,000 cars off the road.

Smart Unconventional Waterflooding in the Nimr-C field in PDO won the Production category. In less than three years, the Nimr-C development plan managed to revive and increase production by more than six fold (from 2,800 bbl/day in 2010 to 17,600 bbl/day in 2014) without any health, safety, security and environment incidents. This was achieved by injecting large volumes of water at the flank of the reservoir while increasing field offtake by infill drilling.

The two projects that won the People category were the Baader project and the Wells Learning Center. Baader is a volunteering project that encourages PDO’s talents to volunteer their time, efforts and skills to support local NGOs and charities in Oman, while the Wells Learning Center is the first training centre in the region that offers training using the DrillSIM5000 simulator and Completion and Well Intervention simulators.  The centre offers quality-blended learning, combining practice and theory in a safe environment, and is managed as a non-profit training and development service for the industry.

Speaking on the occasion, Chris Breeze said, “Shell is proud of its longstanding partnership with PDO in Oman and is delighted to recognise and celebrate the achievements of the PDO winners. All winning teams, in very different ways, epitomize PDO’s vision to be renowned and respected for the excellence of its people and the value it creates for Oman and all its stakeholders.”

“I extend my congratulations to the leadership of PDO and the members of the four project teams who have made these projects such a great success. We are very proud indeed of the fact that this year we have four winning projects from PDO out of 396 nominations from 21 countries,” he added.

PDO Managing Director Raoul Restucci said, “I commend Shell for the Shell Impact Awards programme and for kindly hosting this special event. I am also very proud of the well-deserved recognition for so many PDO projects and relay my sincere congratulations to all PDO staff involved and our partner GlassPoint, for the truly sterling recognition in a highly contested global Shell Impacts Award competition.”