Page 6 - AfrOil Week 08 2020

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NOCAL optimistic about Liberia’s upcoming licensing round
LIBERIA
NATIONAL Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL) hashighhopesoffindingcommercialreserves of crude oil in the blocks that will be offered to foreign investors later this year, according to a high-ranking company representative.
Lester Tenny, NOCAL’s vice-president for technical services, said at a round-table discus- sion organised by the Liberia Petroleum Regu- latory Authority (LPRA) in Monrovia last week that he was confident that the country’s offshore zone held oil. “We will find oil,” he declared. “Ivory Coast discovered oil just right around the same area [where] we are going to launch the bid round.”
He continued: “The geology shows that we have oil. This means that there is prospect of oil but all we have not done is to discover it. This is why efforts are geared towards ensuring that the process leading to discovery is sanitised and prudently guided science.”
Tenny cautioned, though, that the success of the auctions would depend on government support for the process. He urged Monrovia to provide the necessary financial backing and to establish a favourable regulatory environment, saying: “We must invest and we must empower the LPRA. And I keep emphasising this: We have to empower the regulator.”
He also said that government agencies would have to ensure adequate financial backing,
saying: “We also call on other stakeholders like theMinistryofFinancetosupporttheprocess.” Liberia’s government has said that the coun- try’s first licensing round will include nine off- shore blocks. It will begin accepting bids in April
of this year.
All of the blocks slated for auction lie within
the Harper Basin, one of the last unexplored and undrilled regions offshore West Africa. TGS has amassed a range of multi-client data across this acreage to support the licensing round, includ- ing 5,272 km of 2D and 6,276 square km of 3D seismic, gravity and magnetic data. ™
Liberia will begin accepting bids for nine offshore blocks in April (Image: TGS)
ADM Energy set to raise stake in Nigeria’s OML 113
NIGERIA
UK-BASED ADM Energy has arranged to increase its holdings in OML 113, a block located offshore Nigeria that includes the Aje oilfield.
In a statement dated February 24, ADM said it had concluded a sale and purchase agreement (SPA) for a 2.25% stake in OML 113 with EER (Colobus) Nigeria.
The transaction will raise the company’s interest in the block from the current level of 2.7% to around 4.9%, the statement said.
ADM put the value of the deal at $3mn. It said it intended to cover this sum “by the issue of $2mn of new ordinary shares at GBP0.07
per share and $1mn in cash at the time of completion.”
Under the SPA, ADM will acquire 25% of EER’s interests, obligations and rights in OML 113. As a result, its share of revenues will climb from 5% to 9.2% and its share of costs will reach 12.3%, up from 6.7%, even as its participating interest rises only to 4.9%.
At the same time, its net share of daily pro- duction will move up from 148 barrels per day of crude oil to 273 bpd.
Moreover, its net proven and probable (2P) reserves will go up from 8.8mn barrels of oil equivalen,t to 16.4mn boe. 
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w w w. N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 08 26•February•2020