OREANDA-NEWS. November 13, 2012. Dr. Nuri Balrwin chairman of the National Oil Corporation and a delegation comprising members from the Ministry of Oil and Gas , the National Oil Corporation and a number of oil companies’ chairmen attended the opening of The North Africa oil and gas summit that was Held during the period of 6 - 8 November 2012 in the Austrian capital Vienna , organized by the energy exchange company .

Following is the speech made by NOC chairman at the summit:
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it’s with great pleasure to take part in this gathering and address such an esteemed audience.

Immediately, after liberation great effort was made by our young people to restore the oil and gas fields, oil terminals and refineries which were safely put back on operation. Thanks to god, we succeeded to quickly bring our oil production back on stream despite many difficulties and technical and financial hardships. Production restoration was on the 9th of September 2011. Today, I would like to take this opportunity to announce that our industry has practically achieved its forecasted oil production levels, exceeding all expectations. Oil production has reached 1.6 million barrels of per day. Refineries and other Petrochemical plants have been operating near full capacity.

In our new Libya, we are looking forward to creating a distinct Oil and Gas Industry built on trust and transparency. The primary objective is to maintain and develop the hydrocarbon resources and to optimize its exploitation and development according to the latest technologies, and to upgrade and develop the refining, petrochemical and gas processing industries, with emphasis on and the enhancement and involvement of the Libyan content on all industry levels. The development of our human resources will be given a high priority. Health, safety as well as the preservation of the environment will receive much greater attention.

Most of our major facilities currently have enough capacity and are reasonably in good condition and able to accommodate projected planned increases of production, requiring only minor overhauling and upgrading. However, water handling facilities, gas compression capacity and power generation plants will need major overhaul and expansion to cope with future increases in oil and gas production.

Our SHORT term plan is set to increase oil production capacity to about 2 million BOPD and gas production capacity to reach 3.5 billion SCFD, with improved operational conditions, more drilling of development and infill wells, improvement of oil field production and injection facilities, development of many small fields, optimizing artificial lift systems and conducting comprehensive well work over programs. Serious efforts will be made to eliminate gas flaring, constructing new gas processing facilities and increasing compression capacity.

As for the long term, our plans are to increase hydrocarbon reserves and production capacity:
FIRST, by embarking on extensive exploration activities. 730 thousands sq km, or about 40% are open areas.
Exploration experts believe that these areas have a great potential and holding substantial oil & gas reserves. This will require highly qualified human resources and expertise, modern seismic and drilling equipment and technologies.

SECOND, we strongly believe a large amount of our future oil can be targeted in already discovered mature fields.
Advances in technology in recent years as well as the relatively high oil prices will direct the industry to investing more in all areas of hydrocarbon extracting.

In this regard we also believe that improvements to production capacity are expected from our existing producing fields through the implementation of IOR and economically applicable EOR projects.
Extensive studies have identified IOR including EOR potential in many of the large fields where production has declined for one reason or another.
We foresee that such IOR and EOR programs and projects may contribute additional recoverable reserves of at least 7 to 10 billion barrels of oil.

The THIRD part of Libya’s medium to long term plan is to develop its natural gas resources. The gas industry in Libya will witness a new era of development. Until recently and because of economical reasons the use of gas was limited to partially meeting the local demand for power generation and limited industrial uses.
More attention will be given to exploration for gas, including unconventional gas. We will be developing existing gas discoveries, onshore and offshore, in order to meet current and future industrial and export commitments hoping to become a major producer in the region. Our proximity to the European market enhances our opportunities.
As for the DOWNSTREAM, we presently refine more than 350,000 bpd of crude oil through 5 refineries of various capacities. The five domestic refineries are all simple hydro-skimming units. These refineries cover most of our domestic requirement except for gasoline where we import more than 75% of our local requirement.
• We plan to upgrade and increase the capacities of the existing refineries and to study different options of adding new refineries. The objectives are to increase Gasoline and Diesel with improved specifications through the use of the latest available technologies.
• In implementing such programs and projects, we are considering and evaluating different investment options.
Libya now is witnessing many changes. Several major international companies are interested in promoting economic partnerships and we welcome such moves which will help us to develop our hydrocarbon resources for the benefit of the Libyan People and take part in securing the supply of energy to the world.
New policies will need to be drawn up to transform the national economy in general and the energy sector in particular. Our emerging political scene is our road to a brighter future for all.
In this context, many positive changes are foreseen, and among these basic changes are, fair competition transparency and treatment of all companies on equal grounds and clear commercial basis.
Finally, in our new Libya, we are looking forward to a modernized oil industry of highest international standards, an industry that will be built on trust, transparency and strong partnerships.