Petronas to Award Second Deal for Marginal Field Soon

- Petronas to Award Second Deal for Marginal Field Soon

Monday, August 15, 2011
The New Straits Times
by Kamarul Yunus

Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) is expected to announce the second contract to develop a marginal oil field soon.

"Petronas is currently finalizing the second risk services contract (RSC) and will make an announcement in due time," a Petronas spokesman told Business Times.

The spokesman, however, did not identify the field.

In January this year, Petronas said it will award two marginal oil field contracts by April. The only RSC awarded so far is for the Berantai field to the Petrofac-Kencana Petroleum-SapuraCrest Petroleum partnership early this year.

But in its prospectus for listing on Bursa Malaysia last month, Bumi Armada Bhd said it was awarded a floating, storage and offload (FSO) vessel contract for the Sepat field. It is claimed to be the first under the marginal fields initiative of the government's Economic Transformation Program (ETP).

Responding to Business Times' query, the spokesman clarified that Sepat is a field currently being developed under a production sharing contract operated by Petronas Carigali Sdn Bhd, the exploration and production arm of the national oil company.

In December last year, Petronas Carigali awarded the engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning contract for Sepat to Petrofac, which in turn awarded the FSO vessel contract to Bumi Armada.

The development of the marginal oil and gas fields under the new RSC arrangement is part of the initiatives under the ETP.

Malaysia, according to Petronas, has 106 marginal fields, with 580 million barrels of oil.

(C) 2011 The New Straits Times. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved

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Pemex to Award Its First Incentive Contracts Aug 18

- Pemex to Award Its First Incentive Contracts Aug 18

Friday, July 29, 2011
Dow Jones Newswires
MEXICO CITY
by Laurence Iliff

Mexico's state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, said Friday it has set Aug. 18 as the date for the final awarding of its first incentive-based contracts allowed under a 2008 energy reform.

Pemex's first tender under the new contract mechanism is for six mature fields in three groupings in its southern region. Pemex said in a presentation on its website that 27 companies have participated in the tender process for the Magallanes, Santuario and Carrizo drilling areas.

Pemex hopes to use the flexible contracts, which pay bonuses for production above a certain level rather than a set per-barrel rate, to draw the best technology to reactivate about 40 mature fields in total. The flexible contracts will later be used to try and draw oil majors to the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where Pemex has no production.

Under Mexican law, Pemex can't engage in shared-risk contracts, which is common in deep-water projects, and can't pay contractors with oil.

Carlos Morales, head of Pemex's exploration and production division, said during a conference call Friday that the re-opening of mature fields with new technology has great potential to compensate for the natural decline at other fields such as the super-giant Cantarell offshore complex.

Cantarell has fallen from a peak of about 2 million barrels a day in 2004 to about 460,000 barrels a day, according to Pemex figures. Morales said Cantarell has stabilized and will have significant production levels for a prolonged period of time.

Overall crude oil production in the second-quarter of this year was 2.558 million barrels a day on average, compared with the 2.578 million barrels a day in second-quarter 2010, Pemex said.

Pemex recorded a net profit in the most recent quarter of $769 million versus a net loss of $1.7 billion in the year-ago period. Total sales rose 25% compared to $33.22 billion, mostly on higher crude-oil prices. Cash flow as measured by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, rose 31% to $24.1 billion, Pemex said.

Ignacio Quesada, director of corporate finances, said oil prices were affected by worries of availability due to events in the Middle East, among other factors, and that prices remained volatile along with other commodities.

Inline with the oil-price increase, Quesada added, Pemex had to pay higher prices for imported gasoline, which it sells at subsidized rates.

The oil monopoly, which funds about one-third of the federal budget, paid $18.6 billion in taxes and duties in the second-quarter, a 43% rise over the second-quarter of 2010.

Pemex said the economic impact of external and structural effects in the first half of the year included $1.2 billion for subsidies to liquefied petroleum gas sales, $900 million on price losses for gasoline imports, and $4.2 billion in labor obligations.

Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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Lukoil, Partners Award Deal to Drill 23 Iraq Wells -Source

- Lukoil, Partners Award Deal to Drill 23 Iraq Wells -Source

Thursday, July 14, 2011
Dow Jones Newswires
LONDON
by Hassan Hafidh

Lukoil and its partners have awarded a deal to a "known" service company to drill some 23 new wells at Iraq's supergiant West Qurna Phase 2, a person familiar with the project said Thursday.

"The central contracts committee at the Iraqi Oil Ministry is studying the contract and we expect them to take a decision shortly," the person told Dow Jones Newswires.

Along with Norway's Statoil and Iraq's state South Oil Co., Lukoil is expected to award four other major deals in August to help develop the 12.9-billion-barrel field located in Basra governorate in southern Iraq.

The four contracts include a crude processing facility, a 126-megawatt power station, an export pipeline linking the field with a tank farm in Tuba near Iraq's southern export terminals, and six large storage tanks, the person said, adding the largest contract would be the crude processing facility.

The person said that Lukoil has shortlisted five oil services companies for this plant--Saipem, SNC-Lavalin Group, Punj Lloyd, Globalstroy-Engineering and South Korea's Samsung Engineering.

For the power station the Russian supermajor has received offers from a number of companies such as Petrofac and Greece's ENKA, the person said.

The contracts are part of an initial development plan to start production from the untapped oil field, set by Lukoil and Statoil and approved by Iraq's Oil Ministry last year. They are expected to help production at the field hit 150,000 barrels of oil a day in 2013, the person said.

Lukoil and Statoil were awarded a 20-year service contract for West Qurna Phase 2 in Iraq's second licensing round held in December 2009. The companies promised to get the southern field pumping at a rate of 1.8 million barrels a day for payment of $1.15 a barrel.

The development project is one of several that Iraq awarded last year with the ambitious objective of expanding its oil production capacity to 12 million barrels a day by 2017. But Iraq's oil minister said last month that Baghdad was considering scaling down this goal and could renegotiate deals.

Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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Antrim Inks Rig, Services Contract for Greater Fyne Area

Antrim Inks Rig, Services Contract for Greater Fyne Area

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Antrim Energy Inc.

Antrim has signed a Letter of Award with AGR Peak Well Management Limited ("AGR") to provide well project management and drilling services, including the provision of the semi-submersible drilling rig, WilPhoenix, for the drilling of two wells within the Greater Fyne Area, in the UK Central North Sea. The estimated duration for the drilling of the two wells is 50 days, not including testing. A site survey of both locations will be initiated in the next three weeks. Both wells are scheduled to be drilled mid year 2011.

The first well will target the Jurassic Fulmar Formation at approximately 10,400 ft true vertical depth (TVD) on the West Teal Prospect, Block 21/24b (Antrim 100%). The West Teal Prospect has a light oil target (37 degrees API) delineated by 3-D seismic and a previous discovery well drilled in 1991. The original discovery well encountered a gross oil column up to 140 ft thick in the Fulmar Formation but was abandoned after mechanical problems while conducting a cased hole test. The West Teal Prospect is structurally up dip and approximately 4 km west of the Teal Field, which has produced approximately 55 million barrels of oil to date.

The second well is expected to target the Eocene Tay Formation at a depth of approximately 6,000 ft on the Carra Prospect, Block 21/28b (Antrim 100%). The Carra Prospect is a medium gravity target (25 degrees API) delineated by 3-D seismic, on trend and 4 km from the West Guillemot Field. If successful, a discovery on either of these prospects would add significant resources to the scheduled development of the Fyne Field, located 3 km to the northwest of Carra.

Antrim intends to use the proceeds from its recent equity issue to fund the drilling program but will also invite participation from industry partners.