Wintershall, Germany’s largest producer of crude oil and natural gas, part of the BASF Group, announced today the opening of its new office in Abu Dhabi. The new branch in Abu Dhabi, which is one of the most important centers of oil and gas operations in the Gulf region, comes in line with the company’s continuous efforts to expand its activities in the Middle East.

“We want to sustain our successful growth and the Middle East region is gaining an increasingly important role in our diversified portfolio,” Dr. Rainer Seele, Chairman of the Wintershall Board of Executive Directors, explained at the official opening of the company’s office in Abu Dhabi. “In setting up our own representative office, the first German oil and gas  company to do so in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, we aim at strengthening our existing relations with governments, national oil companies and  partners and to help position Wintershall in the region,” Dr. Seele added.

Wintershall’s involvement in the United Arab Emirates already goes back several decades with activities in Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah and Sharjah.

“We now intend to become even more actively involved in long-term  upstream projects in the Gulf Region,” the Wintershall Chairman explained.  Wintershall has made its mark worldwide with a combination of state-of-the-art technology and innovative production methods to improve the yield from increasingly complex deposits.

In addition to investments in finding, developing, and producing  hydrocarbons, the BASF subsidiary Wintershall conducts its own research and development projects in selected technological fields. Overall, Wintershall’s technological development activities focus on harnessing the synergies with the research and development expertise of the world’s largest chemical company, BASF.

Wintershall wants to apply this expertise increasingly to the Middle East: “Horizontal drilling technology in combination with steam flooding and  fracing, as well as our tight gas expertise and especially our decades of experience with sour gas and enhanced oil recovery – we want to use this experience to further develop technically challenging, complex deposits in the region,” Dr. Seele explained.

The BASF subsidiary is already the operator in three exploration blocks in the Gulf region off the coast of the Emirate of Qatar. Block 4N is situated close to the so-called ‘North Field’, the largest natural gas field in the world. The first exploration well in the so-called Khuff Formation of Block 4N is being prepared for 2010.

 

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