ISLAMABAD: The Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) has nine own rigs with the capacity to drill up to 5,500 meters deep, a senior official in the company said.
“The company-owned rigs’ drilling capacity is from 2,500 to 5,500 meters, which are almost 35 to 40 years old,” the official said while talking to APP. Besides, he said, OGDCL had eight rented rigs operating at different oil and gas wells with contractors’ own workforce and other resources.
The official informed that the company had drilled, through both owned and rented rigs, around 84 oil and gas wells in different parts of the country during last four years and made 13 discoveries from September 2012 to January 2016.
Answering a question, he said, OGDCL was not in favour of buying more rigs as per international practice of getting the job done through contractor rigs. Citing the reason for opting rented rigs, he said maintenance of own rigs, which were mostly years old, was expensive, so “We prefer contractor rigs.”
The company’s deployment ratio was almost 250 workers per rig, while a contractor rig was manned by 50 employees, he said, adding that usually OGDCL rigs were used in sensitive areas where contractors were not allowed to operate.
Presently, the official said, 17 wells were under the drilling process, adding that nine new wells had been spud and five were in the testing phase. In the current month, six more drills would be carried out and the company would complete all the process by June, 2016, he added.
