The Milestone of Cambodian First Oil Production in the Khmer Basin, Gulf of Thailand

Abstract

As an ASEAN member country, Cambodia is the eighth country to produce oil from its maritime water in late 2020. The first oil was produced from Cambodian Block A (CBA) which covers most of the Khmer basin, located in the east and in the north of producing oil and gas Pattani and Malay basin respectively, in the Gulf of Thailand (GoT). Before being an oil-producing country, Cambodia has been involved in a long history of exploration activities since the 1970s with international companies including Elf-Erap, Marine Associate, Enterprise, Campex, Premier, etc. The first phase of petroleum development was initiated by Chevron Texaco in 2010 when this US company submitted the Petroleum Permit Application (PPA) to the government of Cambodia. The company failed to reach an agreement with the government on revenue sharing, then KrisEnergy bought out the working interest in 2014 and became the only operator of CBA. A justified Mini Phase 1A was operated by KrisEnergy to flow the oil from six production wells in the Apsara area where there is still a high risk of geological information and time constrain. Apsara area which covers the most prospective petroleum exploration geological trend in Cambodian water was built a minimal facility platform and used the production barge, Ingenium II, to separate the reservoir fluids. As long as the accumulative oil production reached about 300,000 bbl for about five months, the operator of CBA went into the liquidation. In the primary plan, this initial phase was expected to produce 7500 bopd at the peak, however it actually produced the oil less than double in the end. This situation indicated the underperformance of Mini Phase 1A, which resulted in a huge declination of each well capacity. This underperformance of Mini Phase 1A seemed express clearly the results of the uncertainties of petroleum forma-