Austria’s OMV Petrom and Romania’s Romgaz have spud the first of 10 development and production gas wells to be drilled in the Pelican South and Domino natural gas fields in Romania’s Neptun Deep block 160 km offshore in the Black Sea.
The Transocean Barents harsh-environment, ultradeepwater mobile drilling unit is executing the campaign which starts with the first of four wells at Pelican South and six wells at the Domino gas field.
Cristian Hubati, a member of OMV Petrom’s executive board, responsible for exploration and production, said the 10-well campaign “will take us into Q4 2026 … the drilling of the first well is estimated to take 2 to 3 months.”
Pelican South’s first well is located in 120-m-deep water, with the gas reservoir situated about 2000 m below the seabed, Hubati said in a news release announcing the drilling start on 25 March.
Assuming project benchmarks continue to be met, first gas is on track to flow in 2027 in a project that is expected to plateau at 8 Bcm/year sustainable over 10 years, making Romania the EU’s largest gas producer, according to Wood MacKenzie.
OMV Petrom currently estimates the block’s recoverable gas reserves at 100 Bcm.
Halliburton Energy Services Romania and Newpark Drilling Fluids Eastern Europe are providing integrated drilling services for Neptun Deep, leveraging Halliburton’s expertise in cementing, directional drilling, and well completions, according to OMV Petrom.
Pelican’s well foundations were installed using Stavanger-based Neodrill’s CAN-ductor offshore drilling technology that minimizes the environmental footprint of the drilling process.
Other design aspects focused on the environment include
- An offshore gas processing platform that generates its own electricity.
- Wells and fields operated remotely through a digital twin.
- Use of the reservoir’s natural energy to transport gas to shore, thus eliminating the need for compression.
Neptun Alpha Newbuild Progresses
Saipem launched construction of the steel jacket support structure for the Neptun Alpha gas processing platform at its Arbatax, Sardinia, yards in October 2024. Topsides construction is also progressing at Saipem’s yard in Karimun, Indonesia, OMV Petrom reported last fall.
Saipem announced its selection as the engineering, procurement, construction, installation, and commissioning contractor in August 2023, describing its scope of work as
- Construction and installation of the gas processing platform at approximately 100 m water depth.
- Three subsea developments (two at around 1000 m water depth in the Domino field and one in around 100 m water depth in the Pelican field) tied back to the platform.
- A 30-in. gas pipeline around 160 km long and associated fiber-optic cable from the shallow-water platform to Tuzla on the Romanian coast.
- · Offshore operations will be performed by the Saipem 7000 and JSD 6000 vessels with materials testing to be carried out in Romania, through Saipem’s local entity in Ploiesti.
OMV Petrom and Romania’s national oil and gas company Romgaz are together investing up to $4.4 billion in the project’s development phase. Each hold a 50% participating interest in the project.
Romgaz acts through a subsidiary, Romgaz Black Sea Ltd., which it created as the successor to ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Romania Ltd. after Romgaz acquired ExxonMobil’s 50% stake in Neptun Deep in a share purchase agreement closed in August 2022.
Austria’s OMV AG holds a 51.2% stake in OMV Petrom with 20.7% held by Romania’s Ministry of Energy.
“By developing this project, Romania can secure its natural gas needs from domestic sources and become an important player in the European market,” OMV Petrom’s CEO Christina Verchere said.
