French oil services firms target Libya - "before the US returns"
By William Emmanuel
PARIS, March 28 (Reuters) - Some 30 French oil and gas services companies plan to travel to Tripoli next month in a bid to strengthen their position in the Libyan hydrocarbons market before the United States returns to the country.
``We are trying to get in there quickly. Everyone expects the U.S. administration to change its position (on sanctions against Libya) after the American presidential elections in November,' Jean-Jacques Royant, in charge of international cooperation at the French oil and gas suppliers' council (GEP), told Reuters in an interview.
Royant said GEP members would present their products and services at an international fair in Tripoli on April 5-20.
They will be accompanied by the French Secretary of State for Industry and Energy, Christian Pierret, who will be the first member of the French government to visit Libya since April 1999, when the United Nations lifted economic sanctions imposed on Libya in 1992 over the bombing of a Pan Am Airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland.
The United States, which severed ties with Libya in 1981 and reinforced its economic sanctions after the Lockerbie disaster, has yet to normalise relations with Tripoli.
Royant said after eight years of restrictions on foreign investments, the Libyan oil industry was in a parlous state.
Production, at 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), was half what it was before 1992, while annual foreign investment had fallen to $500 million in 1999 from $3.0 billion in 1991.
INVESTMENTS OF AT LEAST $5 MILLION
Libya hoped to raise production to 2.0 million bpd in five years, which meant investing at least $5.0 million over the next two years to renovate its oil infrastructure, he said.
Today, Libya's National Oil Corporation produces between 0.8 and 0.9 million bpd while foreign companies produce 0.5 to 0.6 million.
Several French oil industry majors, including merger partners TotalFina and Elf Aquitaine , and oil services firm Technip are already present in Libya.
According to GEP, Libya has already offered foreign investors 16 new blocks covering 26,000 square kilometres on land and 4,000 km2 offshore, and plans soon to offer further new blocks covering 47,000 km2 on land and 14,000 km2 offshore.
Royant said despite the absence of U.S. companies like the world's top oil services firm Schlumberger (NYSE:SLB - news), competition was fierce between European energy firms established in Libya, which include Germany's Veba (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: VEBG.F), Austria's OMV and Agip, a subsidiary of Italy's ENI .
But he said French oil sector companies were themselves very competitive.
France is the second largest provider of oil products and services after the United States and has supplied Libya with technology developed by the French Petroleum Institute (IFP).
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