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Securing Bahrain’s hydrocarbons potential

3 April 2025

 

Bahrain, which has access to modest hydrocarbons reserves in comparison to its Gulf peers, has been in constant pursuit of additional resources to grow its oil and gas production levels.

The country took a leap towards this goal in 2018, when it announced the discovery of the Khalij Al-Bahrain offshore hydrocarbons basin, which is estimated to contain 80 billion barrels of oil and 10-20 trillion cubic feet of gas. Almost seven years on, however, Manama is not known to have made any notable progress on the commercial appraisal of that oil and gas resource base.

State enterprise Bapco Energies has, therefore, devised a multi-pronged strategy to secure Bahrain’s energy future. The first objective is to maintain the country’s present oil and gas output levels, according to group CEO Mark Thomas.

“Objective number one is to stabilise oil and gas production from the existing reservoirs at the Awali field and stem the decline. These are very mature reservoirs, which, without intervention, will decline quite quickly,” Thomas tells MEED.

Bahrain’s primary oil and gas production comes from the Awali field, where the first oil in the Gulf region was discovered in 1932. Bapco Upstream, a subsidiary of Bapco Energies, is the sole operator of the onshore field. It produces an average of 42,400 barrels a day (b/d) of crude oil and 1.67 billion cubic feet a day of non-associated gas from the Awali field, which is also known as the Bahrain field.

In addition, Bapco Energies draws in about half of the 300,000 b/d production capacity of the Abu Safah offshore field, which is shared by Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

“Objective number two is to develop new opportunities for us,” Thomas says, adding: “We’ve been looking at appraising pre-Unayzah gas from the Al-Jawf and Al-Juba reservoirs,” which Bapco Energies announced discovering in 2022.

“These are deep gas reservoirs, so we call them unconventional. They’re tight rock, need to be fracked and require the drilling of horizontal wells for production. We’ve gone through an appraisal programme on that. We’ll start a development programme in 2025 around those [discoveries].”

Exploration campaign

Bapco Energies is progressing with a “very big three-dimensional (3D) seismic programme” to hunt for offshore hydrocarbons resources, Thomas says. 

“We’re running an extensive campaign covering about 4,500 square kilometres of surface area, where we will be shooting 3D seismic. That is basically around the entirety of [Bahrain]. We will carry on through 2025 and into 2026.

“We hope to be able to identify some structures and then invite companies to come, share the information with them and hopefully do some exploration drilling,” he adds. 

“It’s logical that there will be [a licensing round in the future], assuming that we are successful with the 3D seismic and can identify some structures. But it needs to wait until we have some quality data. 

“This has always been the hindrance for us in attracting international oil companies to come to Bahrain,” he notes. 

“The quality of the data that we had for offshore was not good and, quite frankly, for a company entering a new country, the risk was too high.”

Italian energy producer Eni is the only international player that has been evaluating exploration and production opportunities in Bahrain in recent years.

“By using the latest technology with 3D seismic seabed nodes, and by shooting deeper, we will absolutely have the best data that we can. And, if there are structures offshore, we will definitely find them,” Thomas says.

By using the latest technology with 3D seismic seabed nodes … we will absolutely have the best data

Business expansion

Bapco Energies has set its sights on growing its presence in overseas markets by identifying and exploiting promising opportunities in the upstream sector, similar to the path that has been adopted by some of the other Gulf national oil companies in this decade. 

“We have traditionally been a national oil and gas company, and what we’re looking at now is international expansion,” Thomas says. 

“We’ve got 90 years of experience in exploring for, and developing, oil and gas fields. We want to take that capability, that experience, and apply it internationally.”

He continues: “We’ve taken that proposal through our governance structure and received approval for that.
So now, we’re looking at potential opportunities where we could invest outside of Bahrain, using our capability and experience.

“We are not necessarily [looking at] being an operator, and certainly not [aiming to be] in exploration plays, but more into already-producing fields, or fields in a late stage of development, where the risk is low. These are the types of opportunities that we’re now looking at. They are small in nature, but they’re out there and so we’re searching for them right now.”

Bapco Energies took a stride towards its goal of international expansion in July, with the launch of its venture capital arm, BeVentures.

“BeVentures is a new company for us. It’s something that a lot of the major energy companies are doing, and that is to set up a separate company to look at opportunities for investment in new services and new technologies that can both help their existing business, as well as prepare their businesses for the future, for the energy transition,” Thomas says. 

“We are looking at smaller, direct investments in companies that have a commercial product. What they’re looking for is capital and [ways to] scale [up].

“We’re looking at opportunities principally within our existing businesses around oil and gas production, refining and petrochemicals. But we’re also looking at elements that will prepare us for the future, more into renewables.” 

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Indrajit Sen

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