Shell Says in Commercial Talks for Libya Oil Blocks
By Sara El-Gammal
LONDON, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell is negotiating a number of exploration blocks in Libya, a company official said on Wednesday.
"Following an invitation by (Libya's state-owned) National Oil Company, we are engaged with them in commercial discussions regarding a number of blocks," a Shell spokeswoman told Reuters.
Shell's renewed interest in Libya almost nine years after pulling out became apparent when it attended an NOC presentation in Tripoli in May which outlined terms and acreage for an oil and gas exploration licensing round.
Shell pulled out of Libya in 1991 after relinquishing acreage in the Ghadames Basin when onshore Block NC-153 failed to amount to a commercial find. It had operated the tract after buying into an 80 percent stake from Italy's Societa Energie Montedison.
Earlier, it had drilled a dry hole on Block NC-147 which it later relinquished in 1990.
The spokeswoman declined to clarify whether the blocks currently under discussion were part of Libya's latest oil licensing round which included at least 137 blocks.
Industry sources expected the race for some blocks, particularly in the oil-rich Murzuk basin, to be fierce.
DATA FOR ALL BLOCKS AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING
Industry sources said Libya's NOC has now opened up two data rooms in Tripoli to allow companies to review information available on all the blocks on offer.
Earlier in July, the sources said only data for 14 exploration blocks bundled into three packages mixing prime acreage with high-risk areas, was available for viewing.
"All acreage is available for review. The rooms were busy the first two weeks. They (Libyans) have been having two companies in per week," said one industry source.
Only oil companies which have prequalified for the round are being allowed to view the data.
The race for the three packages, particularly package one, would likely be a close one, they said.
The first package consisted of M1 in oil-rich Murzuk basin, offshore Mediterranean blocks O-9 and O-10, block S-36 in the Sirte basin and an area in little-drilled Kufra basin in the southeast.
The sources said the data rooms would stay open for the next few months, but NOC has yet to notify interested companies of a deadline to submit bids.
Some companies were waiting for guidance from NOC on whether they should be submitting bids or waiting for a timetable after viewing the data.
PROGRESS ON ELEPHANT FIELD WATCHED
Industry sources said Shell had been closely watching progress on UK independent Lasmo's progress on the giant Elephant field, discovered in 1997 in the Murzuk Basin and estimated to hold 500 million barrels.
The project, one of the biggest discoveries in Libya in recent years, had been on hold for over a year but scaled its last major hurdle in May when Lasmo and NOC finally formed an operators' management committee for the venture.
The project appears back on course with the company hoping to proceed with engineering procurement tenders in the next few months.
"They (Shell) want to make sure that matters will be expediated from discovery to production," said one source.
OPEC member Libya, with an average daily output of 1.4 million barrels per day, has been working hard to attract foreign investors after United Nations sanctions were suspended a year ago.
Mostly European and Asian companies are currently operating in Libya like France's Totalfina-Elf, Austria's OMV, Spain's Repsol-YPF and Italy's Agip. |
