Petronas maintains prudent view on O&G industry
PETALING JAYA: Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas), which expects volatility in oil prices to persist in 2019, is maintaining a prudent view on the industry and will react with cautious optimism on new capital projects.
In its latest annual activity outlook report for the 2019-to-2021 period, Petronas said oil demand growth is expected to be at risk, as soaring oil prices and weakening emerging-market currencies could lead to a higher oil import bill.
“There is also a risk of demand erosion due to escalation of trade disputes between the United States and China.”
Petronas emphasised that an abundance of oil and gas (O&G) resources is not a guarantee for long-term economic prosperity.
“The days of ‘easy’ O&G are long gone. Our resource portfolio is becoming more diverse and challenging.”
Towards unlocking these challenging resources and replenishing our funnel economically to sustain our production and integrated value chain, Petronas said it has adopted selected approaches to increase exploration success.
“Geo-imaging technology will allow us to improve drilling success to deliver new upside potentials, reducing the risk of prospects as well as placement costs.
“Carbon capture utilisation and storage technology unlocks high carbon dioxide (CO2) fields to add significant gas production. The ability to monetise high CO2 gas resources economically is important to ensure production sustainability.”
It added that enhanced oil recovery technology also showed significant potential in unleashing a substantial amount of hydrocarbons from existing oil fields economically.
Petronas also said it would strive to improve cost, productivity and efficiency.
“Maturing assets will need continuous support and enhancement to maintain their optimum productivity and cost-efficiency. Mass deployment and rapid replication of in-house and off-the-shelf technologies are applied to improve productivity, efficiency and cost.”
The national oil company said it was also actively seeking ways to deploy technology in terms of digital, data analytics, automation, and robotic solutions in its assets such as its facilities of the future programme.