(MENAFN- Muscat Daily) Oman may shelve some projects in the oil and gas sector if oil prices continue to fall in the long run.
While it was too early to take such action there was a need to check losses due to unscheduled maintenance H E Salim bin Nasser bin Said al Aufi Undersecretary in the Ministry of Oil and Gas has said. He put such losses at six to seven per cent of the production and added that checking these would have made Oman hit the million-barrel mark last year.
Talking to Muscat Daily on the sidelines of the tenth Annual Asset Integrity Management Summit on Monday H E Aufi said that Oman has not cut production as a result of low oil prices. 'Our activity programme is ongoing. I know companies are reviewing their programmes continuously. They are asking contractors to reduce bills find areas for cost cutting and cost saving but production is not hampered. If there is any reduction it could be operations-related and not due to cost saving.'
H E Aufi said that Oman's oil and gas industry tends to spend a lot of money on corrective and maintenance engineers and processes and it was time to spend more on diagnostic or liability engineers 'making sure to prevent the problem before it happens'.
'Organisations should be spending more on liability engineers those who can analyse the data and understand whether a temperature increase is a good thing or bad or pressure increase somewhere is going to have a consequence down the line' he said.
'Oman loses about six to seven per cent of production due to unscheduled maintenance. We could have easily crossed the million-barrel mark a year ago if we hadn't lost on production due to unscheduled maintenance.'
There are no changes in the country's long-term plans he said.
'Before we make any changes we must understand whether this is a long-term problem which is going to last for some time or is it a short term issue.
'If it is long-term we will definitely be shelving some projects that are expensive. But for now that vision is not clear. It is too early to think of shelving because shelving has a lot of consequences like contractual and manpower related issues and it also affects the ability to come back later on. It is a bit early to talk of that but we are on top of it.'
On the lay offs by oil and gas sector companies H E Aufi said the ministry was intervening wherever possible. 'If it is because of oil price we tend to get involved and understand the real reason of laying off. But if it is because of performance issues it is an internal issue of the company and we don't get involved.'
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