Search results

Plans to drive Gabon’s industrial development using gas have been significantly delayed by the problems associated with securing feedstock for flagship projects – led by a fertiliser scheme that developer Olam International has said will require 750bcf of gas supply over a 25-year period to become one of the world’s lowest-cost producers. Efforts to stop oil companies flaring on their offshore acreage – of which Gabon is one of the persistent offenders – should provide a source of gas for various projects, but so far the government has been unable to secure deals with potential suppliers such as Perenco, Royal Dutch Shell or Total to supply the Gabon Fertilizer Company (GFC) plant.


Egypt: Oceaneering contract for WDDM
Saipem has given Oceaneering International a contract to supply umbilicals for theWest Delta Deep Marine Phase 9a development in the Mediterranean. TheWest Delta Deep Marine Block is operated by the Burullus Gas Company joint venture of Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation, BG and Petronas, which gave Saipem a contract for subsea developments in June 2011. Deep-water development Phase 8b began gas production in June 2012. The Oceaneering order consists of ten subsea production control umbilicals totalling 84km in length and two electrical power cables totalling 55km in length. Manufacturing will take place at Oceaneering’s facility in Rosyth, Scotland, and is expected to start in Q2 13 and be completed in Q3 14.

Egypt: Ganope extends bid round deadline
Ganoub al-Wadi Petroleum Holding Company (Ganope) has put back the deadline for its licensing round to 30 June from 30 May. Of the 20 blocks on offer, 11 are in in the Western Desert, two in the Eastern Desert, two in the Red Sea and five in the Gulf of Suez. The Ministry of Petroleum aims to have three bid rounds per year: one each for Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation, Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company and Ganope, but uncertainty following the country’s political upheavals has recently led to delays in the process.

Chariot Oil and Gas has opened a data room to find a farm-in partner for its Namibian exploration and production play, exciting further market interest

AIM-listed Tower Resources has identified a farm-out partner for the Thali Block in the Rio del Rey Basin, where a well is planned for June. Tower said on 2 March that it had executed binding heads of terms for Australia’s OilLR Pty Ltd to take a 24.5% working interest. The farm-out covers $7.5m towards the Njom-3 well, which is expected to cost $15m-$16m, of which some $3m has been spent.

Voyageur Oil and Gas Corporation and state-owned partner Entreprise Tunisienne d’Activités Pétrolières (Etap) may have discovered reserves of unconventional gas

A cabinet meeting in Kinshasa has agreed to open up parts of the Virunga and Salonga national parks to oil and gas exploration. The decision was made on 8 June, but not made public until three weeks later. According to an official communiqué, the Council of Ministers authorised hydrocarbons minister Aimé Ngoy Mukena and his environment and sustainable development counterpart Amy Ambatobe to establish an interministerial committee to prepare the declassification of areas of the Salonga National Park covered by Block 2 of the Cuvette Centrale Basin.

Former Heritage and Candax chief Michael Wood says his new high-risk frontier play in Djibouti will take several years to mature.

The Ministry of Hydrocarbons has announced timings for the planned second phase of its licensing round, offering 15 blocks in total – ten new blocks and five deep and ultra-deep blocks that were also offered in Phase 1. The blocks on offer are Marine XXV, Marine XXVI, Marine XXVIII, Marine XXIX, Marine XXXI and Youbi in shallow water, and Niambi, Conkouati, Nanga I and Nanga III onshore, as well as deep and ultra-deep blocks Marine XIX, Marine XXII, Marine XXIII, Marine XXIV and Marine XXX.

Total has made a concerted effort to catch up with its Anglo-Saxon rivals in East Africa, with a farm-in to Anadarko’s five blocks offshore Kenya following recent acquisitions onshore

Hyperdynamics Corporation’s cash woes have hit its troubled Guinea project.

The World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) has agreed to provide further funding to Vaalco Gabon in the form of a $65m reserve-based loan facility. The $50m senior loan and $15m subordinate tranche will help fund the construction of two new platforms and associated facilities to increase production from the Etame Marin offshore block. The programme aims to increase production to a level close to capacity of the project’s floating production, storage and offloading vessel. Construction of two new platforms is under way, with one expected to be installed in the Etame field and the second to be installed between the Southeast Etame and North Tchibala fields in H2 2014.

The planned sale by Australia’s Beach Energy to Rockhopper Exploration of its Egyptian assets will not go ahead as one of the joint venture parties has exercised its right of pre-emption. UK-based Rockhopper had agreed to buy a 22% non-operated interest in the producing Abu Sennan concession and a 25% non-operated interest in the El Qa’a Plain exploration concession for $22m. “We are clearly disappointed to have been pre-empted on the proposed transaction.

NOC’s push to get international operators to do work and employ locally makes political sense to Tripoli, but localisation measures are adding to the pressure on foreign partners

The onshore blocks to the west of BG Group’s acreage are not proving to be quite so prolific. Well tests from Maurel & Prom’s Ziwani-1 well, spudded in February in the Mnazi Bay Concession, indicate that the potential resource volumes from a clean limestone reservoir of Pliocene age, 3.5 meters thick, are sub-commercial.

Residents of Jakheira – a desert community 300km south of Benghazi – blockaded Wintershall’s oil fields in the Sirte Basin on 1 November, shutting in approximately 50,000 b/d of oil from the As-Sarah field that is normally exported from the Zueitina terminal. Following failed attempts by National Oil Corporation (NOC) to lift the blockade, community leaders have threatened to extend the blockade to other major fields such as Arabian Gulf Oil Company’s Nafoora. The dispute threatens to upset the already fragile relations between Wintershall and NOC.