TPT May 2007

Oil & Gas News

■ 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

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.

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M ay /J une 2007