TPT May 2007

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Oil & Gas News
May/June 2007
Indian, to jointly bid for oil and gas development opportunities
abroad. Interests in an oil discovery in Yemen and in an
offshore exploration block in Oman – plus exploration projects
in northern Iraq, East Timor, and Colombia – will be transferred
to the new company: Reliance Exploration and Production
DMCC. Reliance has also signed a technical evaluation
agreement with Columbia’s hydrocarbon regulator, and entered
into a cooperation agreement with the Colombian national oil
company Ecopetrol for joint projects in that South American
country.
■ Production at the giant Cantarell oil field in Mexico will fall by 15
per cent this year, according to Jesús Reyes Heróles, director
general of the state-owned oil monopoly Petróleos Mexicanos.
Mr Reyes Heróles said other projects would help make up for
the shortfall at Cantarell, which last year accounted for about
55 per cent of Pemex’s production of 3.26 million barrels a day
despite a 13.1 per cent drop in output for the year. A former
Mexican energy minister who took over at Pemex in December,
Mr Reyes Heróles said that the company needed additional
investment of US$8 billion to US$10 billion a year. Pemex’s
sales surpassed US$100 billion in 2006 but it paid US$79 billion
in taxes, accounting for almost 40 per cent of the federal budget
of Mexico.
■ The Italian oil and gas group Eni said it has signed a contract to
become operator of the OPL 135 exploration license in Nigeria
as it aims to expand its presence in Africa’s largest oil-producing
country. Eni told Reuters in Milan (March 9) that it had finalized
a production sharing contract with Nigerian national oil company
NNPC for the Eni unit Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) to
become operator of and 48 per cent stakeholder in OPL 135.
The license to explore the area in the northeast of the Niger
Delta, close to the Kwale/Okpai treatment plants operated by
Eni, will last 25 years. Recovered hydrocarbons will be piped to
Kwale/Okpai for processing and from there put into the NAOC
joint-venture network. That facility is fueled by gas from oilfields
operated by NAOC under the ‘zero flaring’ project, which aims to
eliminate gas flaring on Nigeria’s oil patch by the end of 2009.
Corus Tubes
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