Page 12 - Euroil Week 43 2019
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EurOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES EurOil
US grants new sanctions waiver at North Sea field
UK
Serica is partnered at the field with Iran’s national oil company.
THE US has renewed a sanctions waiver for the Rhum gas project in the UK North Sea that is part-owned by Iran’s national oil company, its London-based partner Serica Energy confirmed on October 24.
The renewal, provided by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), allows “certain US and US-owned or controlled entities and also non-US entities to continue providing goods, services and support to Rhum” until February 28, 2021.
The waiver was first granted a year ago after US President Donald Trump imposed new sanctions on Iran, following his decision to pull Washington out of the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal. The waiver had been due to expire at the end of October. The extension enables Serica to continue operations at the Rhum field unaf- fected, the company said.
“The receipt of the renewed and extended licence and assurance is an excellent outcome which protects this valuable British asset,” Ser- ica CEO Mitch Flegg commented, thanking UK authorities for their support.
Rhum was the third largest source of gas
production on the UK continental shelf in the second quarter, according to Flegg, flowing at a rate of 28,400 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Serica owns a 50% stake in the project which it acquired from BP in November last year. The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) owns the remaining half, but its revenues from this share go into an escrow account in London that Tehran cannot access.
Rhum’s development has been marred by NIOC’s involvement in the project. BP had to halt production in 2010 after the EU and UK introduced new sanctions on NIOC. It was only cleared by UK authorities to resume operations three years later. The UK major deferred investment at the site last year after the US withdrew from the nuclear deal and announced plans to bring sanctions on Iran back into force.
The BP-led Shah Deniz gas field in Azer- baijan, in which NIOC’s Swiss-based subsid- iary NICO has a 10% stake, has also secured a sanctions waiver from the US. Iranian funds are likewise deposited in an escrow account in the Cayman Islands.
i3 reports “transformational” oil find
UK
The results live up to i3’s pre-drill estimate of 197mn barrels of oil in place.
NORTH Sea junior i3 Energy has made an oil discovery at its Serenity prospect in the outer Moray Firth which it believes could be “trans- formational” for the company.
The results of the find live up to i3’s pre-drill estimate of 197mn barrels of oil in place, the London-listed company said in a stock exchange filing on October 29. It said it believed the Seren- ity prospect was connected geologically to the undeveloped Tain oilfield controlled by a joint venture between China’s Sinopec and Spain’s Repsol.
“The discovery of the Serenity oilfield, a potentially very large oil resource, is a trans- formational event for i3 Energy,” CEO Majid Shafiq commented. “We now have proven oil in a second structure on our licences. It is the culmination of three years of detailed geological and reservoir analysis and validates our regional model for the Liberator and Serenity oilfields andneighboringstructures.”
The company’s main development target is the nearby Liberator oilfield, first discovered
in 2013 by South Korea’s Dana Petroleum and acquired by i3 in December 2016. Liberator could yield as much as 200mn barrels of oil in place, according to i3.
Serenity was the second in a $40mn three- well drilling campaign launched by i3 in August, the first being an appraisal well at Lib- erator. The third will bring Liberator into pilot production.
The company said this week it had revised its development plans at Liberator, with the first phase now involving the drilling of four wells tar- geting 63mn barrels of in-place oil. Commercail production should start next year. Previously i3 intended to sink only two wells that would flow around 20,000 barrels per day of oil, adding a third in mid-2021.
i3 said it would now integrate data from the latest well into its geological modelling for Seren- ity, in order to prepare an appraisal and develop- mentscheme.Thecompanydidnotsaywhether it was considering a joint project with Repsol and Sinopec to develop Serenity with Tain.
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 43 31•October•2019
