Page 12 - Euroil Week 34 2019

EurOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES EurOil
Romania to liberalise power, gas prices for households again
ROMANIA
The changes will affect new upstream gas developments.
THE expert committee for industry in Roma- nia’s parliament on August 27 endorsed the abrogation of several articles of the emergency decree (OUG) 114/2018, including those reg- ulating (capping) the electricity price for resi- dential users and compelling local natural gas producers to sell their output at a regulated price.
Separately, the expert committee also approved the repeal of the provision compelling energy companies to pay a 2% turnover tax.
e move, although it has not yet received the nal vote from lawmakers, pushed up the shares of energy companies on the stock exchange. Speaking of broader e ects, the move (if nally enacted) would ease in ationary pressures over- all, although it might result in slightly higher energy bills paid by households.
e opposition, which asked for the extraor- dinary session of the parliament to amend, among others, OUG 114, also wants the
provisions in the decree concerning the banking market revised.
The provisions that regulate the electric- ity prices were enforced under the emergency decree for a three-year period starting March 2019. If the parliament passes the bill in its new form, the energy market regulator ANRE will have 90 days to revise the regulations and liber- alise the energy market once again.
e details of the amendments dra ed by the deputies must be slightly adjusted, though. e article in OUG 114 compelling natural gas pro- ducers to sell their entire output at a regulated price had already been amended under OUG 19/2019 to stipulate that households will pay the regulated price while industrial users have to buy gas on the free market.
As a legal detail, the provision in OUG 19 should be abrogated as well to fully liberalise the market, since abrogating only the provision in OUG 114 would have no legal e ect.™
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
i3 spuds first well in Liberator campaign
UK
First oil is targeted for 2020.
UK-BASED i3 Energy has kicked o a three-well drilling campaign at the Liberator oil eld in the North Sea.
e Borgland Dolphin semi-submersible has started work on the rst of the wells, LPt-02, i3 said in an August 22 statement. e probe will help i3 determine the best location to drill its rst production well at Liberator next year.
e 1977-built Borgland Dolphin was hired by i3 at a dayrate of $130,000, according to Oslo- based Bassoe Analytics, under a 94-day con- tract. Once completed and tested, LPt-02 will be plugged and abandoned, and the rig will move on to drill i3’s second planned borehole, LA-03, which will appraise resources at the adjacent Lib- erator West site. It will then spud the IA-03 well, in order to appraise the nearby Serenity prospect.
“We are excited to now be on location and drilling the rst of three high-impact wells into our 100%-owned Liberator and Serenity struc- tures and look forward to updating the market as each well objective is achieved,” CEO Majid Sha q commented.
i3 is targeting rst oil at Liberator in 2020 and expects output to reach 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) from two wells. A third well will be added in mid-2021. With further appraisal and development at Liberator and Serenity, the Lon- don-listed company estimates its assets could yield more than 200mn barrels of crude.
e three-well campaign this year is slated to cost $40mn. i3 enlisted GE company Baker Hughes to supply equipment and services for the campaign in July, under a contract worth $3.8mn. In order to maximise development spending, i3 agreed only to pay Baker Hughes for the work a er securing its rst revenues from Liberator’s oil.
i3 had net debt of GBP591,562 ($726,350) at the end of 2018, with cash and cash equivalents of GBP598,039.
Liberator was first discovered by Aber- deen-based Dana Petroleum in November 2013. In December 2016 it was bought by i3, whcih had initially intended to develop the site with a partner. ™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 34 29•August•2019