ABSTRACT
The oil industry is experiencing a critical situation as the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. There are several challenges that facing the industry specially the investors as the global decline in demand for Energy merchandises, the future exploration and development drilling in new assets that require massive investments is still uncertain based on the current market price and conditions. The much-reported fall in oil prices and the acute pressure on IOCs to survive in this environment led the companies to stop many ongoing projects and shrink work profile that affected the oil production all over the world. The situation in Egypt is quite challenging for the investors as Egypt is a big consumer, along with the political stability that kept the economy running directed the big IOCs to embrace innovative approaches to lower the operating costs that has the direct impact on the cost per barrel to support maintaining the country growth and secure current energy demand. Dragon Oil company as newly introduced to Egypt's market after acquiring the market shares of one of the major joint ventures in Egypt (Gulf of Suez Petroleum Company- GUPCO) in October 2019 has faced the same dilemma of exerted pressure on the expenditures (Capex and Opex) in order to cope with the global market circumstances. However that didn't deter the company to embrace an innovative way of thinking and handling for the situation. Dragon Oil/GUPCO multi-disciplinary teams achieved successfully a production incremental increase of 10,000 barrels per day through the past six month by adapting a strategic management innovative plans, alternative lower cost technical solutions, production optimization and introducing new proved technologies to the 50 years old assets. This paper will highlight the complete workflow adopted by GUPCO/Dragon Oil teams covering the whole process aspects;appraise, select, define and execution phases to achieve the company goals. The work done was including restoring production from Shut-in offshore platforms or wells via fixing the surface network using neoteric solutions, widely applying rigless interventions using several new techniques in the current producers to maximize their production and optimizing the production cycle across the four production chokes In Summary, Dragon Oil/GUPCO teams managed to increase GUPCO's production despite of the restricted budget and the negative impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the oil price and reach an outstanding performance in operation excellence and safety aspects that results in arresting the natural decline and increase the growth production by about 15% from the 2019 Average production. Copyright © 2023, Society of Petroleum Engineers.