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Bahrain remains in pursuit of hydrocarbon resources

5 November 2025

 

Bahrain, which holds relatively modest hydrocarbon reserves compared with its Gulf peers, has been consistently seeking additional resources to boost its oil and gas production.

The country made a major step towards this goal in 2018, announcing the discovery of the Khalij Al-Bahrain offshore hydrocarbons basin, estimated to contain 80 billion barrels of oil and 10-20 trillion cubic feet of gas. Nearly seven years later, however, Manama is not known to have made any notable progress in commercially appraising that resource base.

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

“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 told MEED in an interview earlier this year.

Bahrain’s primary oil and gas production comes from the Awali field, where the Gulf’s first oil discovery was made in 1932. Bapco Upstream, a subsidiary of Bapco Energies, is the sole operator of this onshore field, also known as the Bahrain field. The field 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.

In addition, Bapco Energies draws in about half of the 300,000 b/d output from the Abu Safah offshore field, which Bahrain shares with Saudi Arabia.

“Objective number two is to develop new opportunities,” Thomas said, 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],” Thomas said at the time.

Exploration campaign

In March, Bapco Energies announced an agreement with US-based EOG Resources to “evaluate a promising gas exploration prospect” in the country, without specifying its location.

Later in the year, Bahrain’s Oil & Environment Ministry signed a concession agreement with Bapco Energies and EOG Resources to explore potential hydrocarbon resources.

Under the contract, EOG Resources Bahrain Awali – the company’s local subsidiary – will work with Bapco Energies to explore, appraise and develop oil and gas reserves in Bahrain. Bapco Energies has not disclosed the nature, terms or scope of activities under the concession agreement.

Thomas had told MEED that Bapco Energies was advancing a “large three-dimensional (3D) seismic programme” to search for offshore hydrocarbon resources. 

“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 added. 

“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 noted. “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 has been the only international company 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 told MEED.

Despite an oil production capacity of only about 205,000 b/d, Bahrain holds a key seat in the Opec+ coalition. Bapco Energies aims to maintain, if not increase, its oil and gas production levels through capital expenditure on projects.

Main image: View of Bahrain's first oil well at the country's Oil Museum

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Indrajit Sen

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