Page 6 - AfrOil Week 23

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Eni picks up Cote d’Ivoire blocks
CotE d’ivoiRE
ENI has won two blocks o shore Cote d’Ivoire, the Italian company announced last week. e areas, CI-501 and CI-504 are around 30 km o - shore and cover around 911 square km. Eni will have 90% stakes in both blocks and will serve as the operator, while state-owned Petroci will have the remaining 10%.
CI-501 covers 512 square km and is 80 km southwest of Abidjan, with water depths of 100 to 2,400 metres. CI-504 covers 399 square km and is 60 southwest of Abidjan, with depths ranging from 1,000 to 2,350 metres.
Eni also owns CI-205, to the south, also with a 90% stake. e company said it would study these blocks together, in order to follow geologi- cal trends, using its proprietary technology. e company returned to Cote d’Ivoire in 2015, buy- ing a 30% stake in CI-100.
The CI-100 block was first awarded to Yam’s Petroleum, with Total taking a 60% stake in the area in October 2010. e French company cited potential similarities with Ghana, where the Jubilee eld had been dis- covered in 2007.
Total drilled the Ivoire-1X well on CI-100 in 2013, nding 28 metres of net oil pay, in around 100 metres of Cretaceous reservoirs. Oil from the well was found to be 35 degrees API.
Interest in Cote d’Ivoire has been increasing as the industry emerges from the downturn and the country has resolved various insecurity prob- lems, in addition to its maritime border dispute with Ghana.
In late 2017, the country awarded ve blocks
to BP and Kosmos – CI-526, CI-602, CI-603, CI-707 and CI-708. Speaking at the Africa E&P Summit, in May, Kosmos Energy’s chief explora- tion o cer, Tracey Henderson, said it had seized the opportunity o ered by the downturn. “We’re maturing prospectivity in the deepwater,” she continued, noting the appeal of securing a large acreage position.
“We have the advantage of having seen some of the exploration that was done on the inbound trend and that gives us con dence that there’s a working petroleum system. We recently shot a 3D [seismic] survey, which we’re interpreting now, to see if we can mature some of the traps. It could deliver some drilling options in 2021,” Henderson said.™
Dragon Oil strikes on BP’s GUPCO
EgyPt
taxEs Paid:
of the us$332.8 million paid in taxes by bP in 2018, only us$18.4 million came from its Gulf of suez assets.
DRAGON Oil has agreed to buy BP’s Gulf of Suez concessions, the super-major announced last week. The Dubai-backed company will take producing and exploration licences, including BP’s stake in the Gulf of Suez Petro- leum Co. (GUPCO). The sale fits with BP’s broader plans to sell o mature areas and focus, on a country level, on the production of gas. Dragon is owned by the Emirates National Oil Co. (ENOC).
No price was given for the transaction. Before it was announced, though, in May, Reuters had reported it would be around US$600 million. GUPCO produces around 70,000 bpd of oil and 11.3 mcm per day of gas.
e deal is subject to Egyptian government approval and should complete in the second half
of this year. BP said it was part of the company’s plan to sell more than US$10 billion of assets over the next two years.
BP’s CEO, Bob Dudley, took pains to note the importance of the North African state to the company. “In the past four years we have invested around US$12 billion in Egypt – more than anywhere else in our portfolio – and we plan another US$3 billion investment over the next two years.”
BP North Africa’s president, Hesham Mekawi, said the company was on track to triple its 2016 net production by 2020 in Egypt. e statement went on to a rm the proposed start up date of its Raven eld, part of the broader West Nile Delta (WND) project, later this year. Taurus and Libra, also part of WND, started in
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 23 11•June•2019