A Giant Oilfield

Brief

The oil field covers 3,300 square kilometres of the North Caspian Sea. Its recoverable oil reserves are estimated at 9-13 billion barrels. The scale, safety, engineering, logistical and environmental challenges make this one of the world’s biggest and most complex mega-projects.

The client engaged HKA to act as trusted commercial, programme and engineering advisors.

What we did

As expert advisors, we provided a suite of specialist services which included:

• Detailed technical audit of the consortium contractor including contractual ecosystem, systems, processes, controls, and managerial performance.
• Technical and commercial evaluation of consortium contractor’s proposed options and subsequent proposed improvement works for phase II works – principally to increase experimental production to full capacity.
• Failure causation analysis of technical issues including desktop studies and laboratory testing.
• Year on year forensic analysis of consortium contractor’s performance for contractual and commercial compliance and ultimately cost recovery under the production agreement contract.
• Expert engineering, contractual and commercial assessment of project delays, cost increases and the associated programme and budgetary impact.
• Party support in commercial negotiations. Subsequent evaluation of draft contractual amendments to the development plan and budget for the following year.

Outcomes

Our cost, programme and technical assurance provided the client and key stakeholders with enhanced confidence in the development plan and budget, saving our client billions of dollars and allowing them to successfully renegotiate the Production Sharing Agreement.