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AfrOil INVESTMENT AfrOil

Tanzania green-lights Aminex’s

farm-out deal for Ruvuma

TANZANIA UK-BASED Aminex has secured the Tanzanian The remaining $2mn came from a $2mn
government’s approval for its farm-out deal with loan that ARA extended to cover its partner’s
ARA Petroleum of Oman. tax obligations to the Tanzanian government,
In a statement dated October 12, Aminex which had requested payment of capital gains
said that Tanzanian authorities had given its tax in anticipation of the transfer. Aminex has
wholly owned subsidiary Ndovu Resources a said it will repay the loan with part of the money
green light for the transfer of a 50% stake in the that the Omani firm is due to pay upon the com-
Ruvuma onshore block to ARA Petroleum Tan- pletion of the farm-out deal.
zania (APT), an affiliate of ARA. The transfer The British company has been leading devel-
will also see APT replace Aminex as operator of opment work at the Ruvuma block under a pro-
the project, the statement said. duction-sharing agreement (PSA). Solo Oil, also
Aminex did not divulge the full value of the based in the UK, is a non-operating partner in
farm-out deal. It did indicate, though, that it the project.
expected the transaction to be completed in less The companies have already discovered gas
than a week. at Ntorya, a field within the licence area that may
Robert Ambrose, the CEO of Aminex, com- contain as much as 763bn cubic feet (21.607bn
mented: “We are delighted to finally receive cubic metres) in recoverable reserves. ™
government approval [for] the farm-out and
would like to thank all agencies of the Tanzanian
government that were involved in the process.
We would also like to thank ARA Petroleum for
its invaluable assistance and support in secur-
ing government approval of the farm-out ... We
now look forward to completing the transaction
within the next few days and handing operator-
ship over to APT.”
Ambrose also expressed gratitude to ARA
for making $5mn worth of credit available to
Aminex within the last 12 months. He did not
provide a breakdown of that sum, but previous
reports indicate that part of it came from the
$3mn funding arrangement that the Omani
company entered into with Aminex in Novem-
ber 2019. ARA agreed earlier this year not to
demand repayment of the principal of this loan,
even though the British company had already
used $2.67mn of the total. It also said it would
not begin collecting interest on the due date of
July 1, 2020. Ruvuma is home to the Ntorya gas field (Image: Aminex)

PERFORMANCE
Tullow hits production milestone at Jubilee

GHANA TULLOW Oil (UK/Ireland) reported last week per day (bpd) of oil in the first half of 2020
that one of its subsidiaries, Tullow Ghana Ltd and said it had invested $10.8bn in the project
(TGL), had marked a milestone at Jubilee, its between 2007 and 2019.
largest Ghanaian asset. Rahul Dhir, Tullow’s CEO, called last week’s
In a statement, the company said that TGL production milestone “a significant moment”
had raised the total volume of oil extracted from for his company, which has experienced diffi-
the offshore Jubilee field to 300mn barrels. It also culties in other parts of Africa over the last 12
reported that Jubilee had yielded 84,700 barrels months.

Week 41 14•October•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P11