Banking on deep-water finds

Brunei hopes recently licensed deep-water acreage will lead to the natural gas discoveries that are needed to support the planned expansion of LNG exports. With field rehabilitation projects to help maintain production and favourable geology, similar to that of Malaysia, the future may be bright, reports Paul Hueper from Bandar Seri Begawan

OVER $300m a year in upstream investment is required to maintain the production capacity of Brunei's onshore and offshore oil and gas fields. The majority of this investment will be made offshore, from where most of the country's 200,000 barrels a day (b/d) of oil and 1.1bn cubic feet a day (cf/d) of gas production comes. Oil exploration began in northwestern Borneo in the late 1800s. Brunei's first oilwell was drilled in 1899, but this, and other early wells spudded on prospective anticlines near the sultanate's coastline, were dry. In 1913, a Shell company - Anglo-Saxon Petroleum - acquired a 440-square-km oil-prospecting and mining concession and conducted the first geological survey of t