Page 10 - FSUOGM Week 37 2019
P. 10
FSUOGM INVESTMENT FSUOGM
Gazprom Neft eyes Iraqi gas project
RUSSIA
Iraq awarded the project to international investors in 2011, but they were unable to proceed because of security risks.
RUSSIA’S Gazprom Neft is eyeing a role in the development of Iraq’s Mansuriyah gas field, an Iraqi oil official has said. The oil arm of Moscow’s national gas giant Gazprom showed “great inter- est” in the project, Oil Minister Thamer al-Ghad- ban told reporters at the World Energy Congress in Abu Dhabi on September 11.
Mansuriyah lies in the volatile Diyala Prov- ince east of Baghdad and bordering Iran. A con- sortium of Turkish Petroleum, South Korea’s KOGAS and Kuwait Energy won rights to develop the Mansuriyah site in 2011, but the project was halted in 2014 because of security risks after Islamic State militants swept across large swathes of Iraq.
Iraqi authorities cancelled the consortium’s contract for the field last year, citing its “delay and failure” to resume work at the site. Pockets of militants still operate in the mountainous areas of Diyala and are capable of launching hit-and- run attacks against installations.
Mansuriyah holds an estimated 130bn cubic metres of gas reserves, with a projected produc- tion capacity of more than 3 bcm per year. Iraq wants to use this gas as fuel at local power plants.
Gazprom Neft has been invited by the Iraqi government to take part in a tender to develop the deposit, a company representative told Kom- mersant on September 12. The company plans to discuss the terms of its potential participation, after which it will decide whether to develop the project on its own or with partners.
Gazprom Neft’s main asset in Iraq is the Badra oilfield, where it serves as operator with a 30% stake. It is also developing two discoveries in Iraqi Kurdistan, Garmian and Shakal.
In related news, al-Ghadban said Iraq had agreed to bring on board a Russian partner known as Stroytransgaz Oil to help develop another site, Block 17 in the restive Anbar Prov- ince, which was long a stronghold of so-called IS. The company is suspected to have ties with Stroytransgaz, a Russian firm subject to US sanc- tions that is owned by Kremlin ally Gennady Timchenko.
The block is thought to hold significant gas potential and lies along the border with Saudi Arabia, north of locations where Saudi Ara- mco has sought to tap unconventional gas resources.
Lukoil secures stake in offshore Congo block
RUSSIA
Lukoil will work with Italy’s Eni at the site.
NEW Age M12 Holdings, a subsidiary of Jersey-registered New Age (African Global Energy), has wrapped up the sale of its 25% stake in Marine XII, a shallow-water block located off- shore Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), to Lukoil, Russia’s largest privately owned oil operator.
The parties finalised the sale last week, in line with the sale and purchase agreement (SPA) they signed in June, according to press reports. As a result, equity in the Marine XII project is now split between Eni (Italy), the operator of the block, with 65%; Lukoil, with 25%; and Societe Nationale des Petroles du Congo (SNPC), the national oil company (NOC), with 10%. Neither the Russian company nor Eni nor SNPC com- mented publicly on the transaction last week.
The Russian company paid $800mn for its minority stake in Marine XII, which contains both crude oil and natural gas. As a result, it is now a party to the production-sharing contract (PSC) covering the block.
Marine XII, which covers an area of 571
square km, is believed to contain as much as 1.3bn barrels of oil equivalent (boe) in proven and probable reserves, according to an inde- pendent audit. It lies 20km off the coast of the Republic of Congo in water ranging from 20 to 90 metres deep.
Eni and its partners have found crude oil, gas condensate and natural gas at the block. They began developing two sections of Marine XII, Litchendjili and Nene, in 2015. These two fields are currently yielding around 28,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude and condensate, as well as 1.7mn cubic metres per day of gas.
New Age said in June that the sale of its stake in the offshore block “marked the culmination of a successful investment cycle.” It added that it intended to “utilise the proceeds from this transaction to further strengthen its balance sheet and to redeploy into earlier-stage opportu- nities within its African portfolio, including the Marine III licence, which is also in the [offshore zone of the] Republic of Congo.”
P10
w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 37 18•September•2019
