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History |
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Vision:
Through continues improvement,
standards and technology AFPC strives to achieve
excellence in all its activities, thereby remaining the
leading International Joint Venture Company in Syria
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Al Furat Petruleum Company
(AFPC)
the leader in the region in
Reservoir Management
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1. History:
AFPC was established under Service Contract no. 210 ratified
by Law no. 43 of 1977 and named as per decree-law no. 12 in
1985.
AFPC is a joint venture company between the
General Petroleum
Corporation (50%) and private shareholders
Syria Shell Petroleum Development (SSPD)
(32%) and
others , initially Deminex (18%). Where the shareholding of
Deminex has changed
hands a number of times, first to
Petrocanada in year 2002
and thereafter to Himalaya Energy Syria (HES, a
partnership between CNPC and ONGC) in year 2006,
the involvement of SSPD in AFPC has been continuous -
ensuring state of the art technology transfer into AFPC and,
through provision of experts, providing technical expertise
and coaching of national staff, many of whom subsequently
replaced Shell experts .
CNPC, in addition to their involvement through HES, acquired a 35%
shareholding in SSPD in 2010.
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AFPC is managed through its Board of Directors, made-up of a
Chairman (GPC) and 3 further national members assigned by
GPC, and the AFPC General manager (Shell) plus 3 other
members assigned by the private shareholders. |
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AFPC was established after the discovery of the Thayyem
field in the Euphrates region, in 1984. In successive years
a large number of new fields were discovered and taken into
production and some 700 wells drilled in more than 35
fields. Cumulative production reached 2 bln bbls in 2006;
where AFPC production peaked at 400,000 b/d in 1993-1994,
currently 38 fields are being produced at a combined rate of
some 100,000 bbl/d. |
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Approximately 65% of AFPC production is made possible
through the injection of water into the oil reservoirs,
which pushes the oil towards the producing wells. The water
injection system is managed and monitored closely by AFPC’s
Reservoir Engineering and Production Operation Support
groups.
Water injection started in 1994 taking fresh water from the
Euphrates river. By now, only 20% of produced fluids consist
of oil with water making up the rest. Water injection
currently averages 550,000 bbl/d with most of the water
coming from produced water re-injection.
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The oil is processed in 4 Central Processing Facilities near
the Omar, Tanak,
El Ward and Thayyem fields, from where
it is transported by 3 separate pipelines to the Syrian
Company Oil Transportation pipeline at T2 for onward
transport to Banias.
In addition to oil (and water) AFPC also produces
hydrocarbon gas, which is produced together with the oil,
currently some 100 mln scf/d. Part of this gas is treated at
the Omar Gas Plant and part of it is evacuated to the Syrian
Gas Company’s Deir EzZor Gas Plant.
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Some of the gas that is treated at the Omar Gas Plant is
used in a Power Generation Plant that AFPC operates, which
feeds all of AFPC’s facilities and the Deir EzZor Gas Plant
through a sizeable electrical grid that was specifically
built for this purpose. The rest of the gas treated at the
Omar Gas Plant is sold to the Syrian Gas Company.
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The foreign shareholders fund all investments in AFPC
necessary for drilling wells and building & operating the
many oil facilities - this has exceeded US$ 8 bln since
1985. These investments have contributed significantly to
the economic and social development of the area in which
AFPC operates. Current investment, both Capex and Opex, is
in the order of US$ 300 million per year.
In exchange for their investments, the foreign shareholders
are entitled to a small percentage of the oil produced.
Further, a certain percentage of oil production is set aside
from which the foreign shareholders can recover their costs.
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AFPC employs some 3300 staff. In addition to some 2500
direct hire AFPC staff this number is made up of some 700
SPC staff (many of which are engineers working in AFPC’s
core business), 65 Shell experts and some 50 outside
contractors. 2400 staff are working in the field, the rest
are located in the head office in Damascus. The number of
experts in AFPC is continuously reduced.
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