Canadian influence turned things around


■ Continued from Page 15


The years saw general pollution cleanup and remediation of over 800 Albpetrol old well locations so the land could be returned for agricultural purpose.Channels were cleaned of sludge and oil,and once all the Albpetrol operated wells were taken over,produced water was no longer allowed to flow to the Adriatic Sea. A central treating facility (CTF) was constructed to clean the produced oil


from around 20 per cent water cut to below two per cent to be loaded and considered sales oil.


Stang added some of his North American colleagues had heard the stories in Albania about their antiquated oil production system, but never really believed it until they saw it with their own eyes. “If you were to see it now, you would never know it was the same place.


They were absolute environmental eye sores.Afterwards, farmers were farm- ing land right up to the well, where before you couldn’t get up to the well. It was small-scale farming, with donkey carts and such, but it changed quite a bit,”said Stang. Stang estimated it probably took 10 years for the Canadian influence to help get Albania up to speed with its exploration efficiencies and steward- ship of the land after decades upon decades of neglect. The first oil wells were drilled in 1927 by Albpetrol and Italians who over


the years eventually ended up drilling over 3,000 wells in the parcel of land, all while being under communist rule. Production volume peaked in 1975 at 15,000 barrels per day. The production method used was pumpjacks and insert pumps on the 1500M deep wells.The oil was very sandy and heavy (7° to 11° API gravity). Even seeing how they kept their previous machinery operating would


make the modern oil man cringe, with no thought to either business or envi- ronmental repercussions.Machinery was rotating into pools of oil on the out- side to keep them lubricated.


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“They were lubricating the cranks on the pump jacks on the outside and


they would leak down inside.They had the crank cases wide open on them and lubricate them with lube oil that was ground based,”said Stang. A lack of equipment maintenance and reduced drilling activity saw the vol- ume drop to virtually nothing by 1990, when at that time,Albania had left communist rule and became a democratic country.Very little improvement in the oilfield was seen until 2004 when the predecessor of BPAL entered into an Operating Agreement and Plan of Development with the Albanian Government to take over about 10 pre-existing wells per month and clean up the pollution, remediate and recomplete the wells using North American technology to Canadian standards, which all the national operations person- nel needed to be trained in. At one time while Stang was in Albania, BPAL had employed 500 direct


employees and 1,700 indirect employees. Stang’s influence with the company he worked for not only helped with business efficiencies and the environment, but safety as well.


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