The Defence Energy Department is preparing to expand crude oil reserves in the northern provinces, allocating 54 million baht for three oil wells in 2019.
Snr Col Norasing Peemayotin, deputy director-general of the department, said it plans to drill three wells next year, expecting to discover new oil reserves in the northern region.
The department has owned the rights for exploration and production activities in six northern provinces -- Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Lamphun, Lampang, Phayao and Phrae -- since the early 1950s.
The department's first refined oil was produced in 1959. The crude oil was found above ground during King Chulalongkorn's era, more than 100 years ago.
Snr Col Norasing said the department's oil resources have combined reserves of 93 million barrels, which are expected to be depleted within 11 years.
The crude oil is pumped at a rate of 750 barrels per day, and all output is fed to the department's oil refineries adjacent oil resources in Chiang Mai's Fang district.
All refined oil is used for national security activities.
"The department plans to add oil reserves using crude oil technology to recover abandoned wells that were depleted by using activated bacteria to restart crude oil flow again," Snr Col Norasing said. "Some wells are not pumped, due to high viscosity, and some have volumes that are too low be pumped."
He said the department has teamed up with Chiang Mai University to work on R&D to use new species of bacteria to revive underground crude oil resources.
The R&D took two years. Preliminary field tests were successful at the Mae Soon oil well.
"The department plans to conduct more field tests before expanding to other depleted oil wells in six provinces," Snr Col Norasing said. "We will use water flood technology together with revival bacteria in the next step to expand oil reserves."
The Mae Soon oil well has refining capacity of 2,500 barrels per day.
The department plans to upgrade refined oil for higher value because heavy crude oil from the northern region comes with low prices for products such as bunker oil, naphtha and kerosene.
The department will conduct more R&D activity to turn the naphtha into petrol and the bunker oil into diesel through chemical processing.
Snr Col Norasing said the department can allocate a budget for turning heavy to light crude, but it requires a higher budget with lower returns for investment, so the plan is to conduct R&D with Chiang Mai University for the other project.
The budget was approved by the research team.
