During the Qatar Sustainability Summit 2019, the Omani companies BAUER Nimr LLC and Petroleum Development Oman received the Award for Excellence in Climate Action, marking their effort to make the oil and gas sector green, while contributing to significant CO2 emission reductions. Dr. Yousef Mohamed AlHorr, founding chairman of Gulf Organisation for Research & Development presented the award. The project was recognized for its contribution to greening degraded desert lands, innovative water solutions and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Since 2009, BAUER Nimr LLC and Petroleum Development Oman formed a strategic alliance to foster sustainable treatment of hydrocarbon-contaminated produced water. Large quantities of produced water are generated on a daily basis across oil fields. For many years, the general disposal practice was reinjection into deep aquifers using energy-intensive high-pressure pumps. With the development of Nimr Water Treatment Plant, BAUER Nimr LLC realized a concept to treat 175,000 m3/day produced water biologically in a series of 500 ha wetland terraces.
“The implementation of nature-based environmental solutions has been a game changer to Petroleum Development Oman. Not only is the produced water being treated to meet stringent effluent standards, it also allows us to reuse the produced water to foster economic diversification through implementation of biosaline agriculture. Combined with a shift from energy-intensive deep well disposal to gravity flow surface treatment, we are able to reduce CO2 emissions levels by 225,000 tons per annum,” said Dennis Kronborg Alexandersen, international business development director at BAUER Nimr.
