Energy major Petronas says it could spend more than £8billion in a bid to unlock millions of extra barrels from Malaysia’s oil fields.
The Malaysian firm believes up to half of the country’s producing fields have the potential to be opened up further through enhanced oil recovery techniques.
The company is looking at a 10-year programme to open up its maturing oil producing fields, the company’s vice president Wee Yiaw Hin said.
“Currently more than 10 EOR projects are in the pipeline at various maturation stages,” he told the Bernama news agency.
“An estimated total investment of $14billion is required to execute these EOR projects.
“We are optimistic about the EOR potential, which will be implemented in phases over the medium and long term, with many programs to be rolled out over the next 10 years.”
The first project to use enhanced recovery methods will be the Tapis field, with £1.9billion being spent in a bid to increase production from 4000 barrels of oil equivalent per day at the moment to around 35,000 barrels per day by 2017.