Lundin Oil in Africa
Lundin Oil is close to a deal in a new country in North Africa. They have been negotiating for an oil concession for some time now, and the discussions are in a sensitive phase, so the name of the country is still kept secret.
My best guess is Tunisia or Egypt, but I don't really know.
Beside Libya and Sudan, Lundin Oil already has a little known concession in Somalia. In 1986 IPC and Gulfstream Canada acquired 2 blocks in northern Somalia on the coast of the Gulf of Aden. They believe Ma'arib-Jawf in Yemen, in which Hunt Oil discovered some oil fields, extends into Somalia. IPC completed a seismic program and extensive geological and geochemical sampling and mapping.
The prospectivity of the blocks allowed IPC to farm out working interests to Amoco, Murphy and Neste (the Finnish national oil company). Lundin Oil has retained a 20% working interest in the Somalia Concession Agreement.
Lundin Oil will be carried through all exploration costs until 2 exploration wells have been drilled. These wells were to be drilled in 1988, but unfortunately, due military strife, the operator Amoco declared force majeure and the drilling program was postponed. And today, 11 years later, the force majeure situation is still ongoing.
But sooner or later peace has to come even to Somalia, one of the absolutely poorest countries on earth. Oil revenues wouldn't exactly hurt the nation's economy.... And in the meantime, all seismic and geological data are safely stored in Amoco's and Lundin's computers in Chicago and Geneva. |
