ALGERIA - The Ourhoud JV.

The Ourhoud group of fields combines the ORD-4 discovery well and confirmations in late 1996 from Anadarko's last Berkine East (BKE) well and MLN-2 well of Louisiana Land & Exploration (now Burlington Resources) - near the Libyan and Tunisian borders. All these structures have the same Fm, a giant, operated by Anadarko, Compania Espanola de Petroleos SA (Cepsa), Agip (Lasmo) and Burlington Resources. Sonatrach got these firms and their partners to negotiate a joint development and production venture called the Ourhoud Organisation consisting of Sonatrach, Anadarko, Burlington Resources, Cepsa, Agip, Maersk and Talisman of Canada.

These companies signed their JV in late 1997. The joint field, Ourhoud (originally called Qoubba), was then said to contain 2,000m barrels of mostly recoverable oil. It is the second largest field in Algeria next to Hassi Messaoud. Cepsa's share of Ourhoud is the largest among the foreign firms - 40%. The field, in Triassic TAGI and Devonian Strunian sandstones and a Devonian Fm, is by far the main Ghadames oil zone. Developed by a partnership of JGC of Japan and Initec of Spain, under a $715m turnkey contract awarded in September 2000, the field's first 75,000 b/d phase went on stream on schedule in December 2002. Its two other 75,000 b/d trains were commissioned in March 2003 and raised the output to 230,000 b/d. The biggest share of production goes to Cepsa, with Sonatrach holding 51% of the JV. The Ourhoud oils are of the sweet 41-42[degrees] API range. They have flowed without water, hydrogen sulphide or carbon dioxide.