Thailand’s national upstream company PTTEP has ramped up development drilling at its producing G1/61 asset in the Gulf of Thailand, aiming to more than double output in the next 12 months.

PTTEP has accelerated the drilling of more production wells at its G1/61 project, which comprises the Erawan, Platong, Satun and Funan fields, aiming to boost gas production to 400 million cubic feet per day of gas by the middle of the year, then further to 600 MMcfd before end-2023 and reaching its target output of 800 MMcfd of gas in April 2024.

The company acquired the G1/61 asset from former operator US supermajor Chevron but has been forced to slow its planned production hike due to a dispute between the two companies that thwarted PTTEP from getting the early access to the offshore infrastructure that it had sought.

The operator was recently awarded blocks G1/65 and G3/65 in the Gulf of Thailand from the kingdom’s 24th licensing round.

“As the two new blocks are located nearby the G1/61 project and G2/61 project, PTTEP can expedite project development for the country’s energy security,” said Montri Rawanchaikul, PTTEP chief executive.

Meanwhile, the operator has moved into the front-end engineering and design phase for the carbon capture and storage project at its producing Arthit field — also in the Gulf of Thailand — and PTTEP expects to take the final investment decision on this proposed CCS pilot scheme in the second half of this year.

The company in the first quarter remitted some 8.3 billion baht in income tax, royalties and other remunerations to the government which, PTTEP said, “supported national development in various areas such as community, education, and research and development funds”.

Also, by end-March it had reduced accumulated carbon emissions by more than 1.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent from the 2020 base year.

This was achieved through E&P portfolio management and various initiatives to reduce greenhouse emissions from the production process such as flare gas recovery and utilisation, improvement of production efficiency, enhancement of energy efficiency and applying renewable energy, PTTEP said.

The operator earlier this year established the Technology and Carbon Solutions Group that will focus on the investments in businesses beyond E&P, driving for a low-carbon organisation. This includes businesses related to renewable energy, power, hydrogen, CCS and carbon capture and utilisation.

PTTEP posted a first quarter net profit of $569 million, up from the $417 million net profit in Q4 2022 that itself had been a decrease of $247 million compared to the previous three months.

The company’s total revenues for the three months ended 31 March were $2.314 billion, down 14% from the prior quarter primarily due to lower sales volumes of 460,817 barrels of oil equivalent per day because of lower contribution from its overseas projects.