The world’s biggest energy companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp, BP Plc and Chevron Corp, are among the 62 corporations that may bid in Libya’s second auction of oil drilling-rights october 2005.
Libya’s state-owned National Oil Corporation (NOC) said 12 companies from the US have asked for bidding packages. 19 from Europe, 16 from Asia, 5 from the former Soviet Union, 4 from Canada, 4 from Australia, one from South America and one from Africa also requested packages. Libya will auction permits on October 2 to search for oil and gas in 26 areas, covering about 100,000 sq km (38,600 square miles), nearly the size of the island of Cuba. The site of Africa’s largest oil reserves, Libya wants to attract $30bn of investments to double production this decade to 3mn bpd. Rising demand worldwide pushed crude-oil prices to a record of more than $70 a barrel on August 30.
The US eased sanctions against Libya last year, imposed after terrorism accusations in 1986, allowing for the return of US oil companies. The list of likely bidders, obtained from National Oil in Tripoli, includes US companies ConocoPhillips, Occidental Petroleum Corp, Marathon Oil Corp, Amerada Hess, Unocal Corp, Anadarko Petroleum Corp and Kerr-McGee Corp, and Vintage Petroleum IncOccidental, Chevron and Hess won 11 of the 15 permits auctioned in January 2005, in the first bidding round since oil was discovered in Libya in 1959. Until then, the nation awarded blocks after talks with companies.Western European companies BP, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Total SA, Eni Spa, Statoil ASA, Norsk Hydro ASA, Repsol YPF SA, RWE-DEA AG, BG Group Plc, Gaz de France, Wintershall AG, OMV AG and AP Moller-Maersk A/S were among the likely bidders.
No company from Europe won a permit in Libya’s first bid round. Other possible bidders are Canada’s Petro-Canada, Talisman Energy Inc, Nexen Inc and Verenex Energy Inc, Australia’s BHP Billiton Ltd, Woodside Petroleum Ltd and Oil Search Ltd, Russia’s Gazprom, Lukoil, Tatneft and Itera Holding Ltd, and Ukraine’s NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy. India’s and China’s largest oil companies, Oil and Natural Gas Corp and China National Petroleum Corp, were among 16 Asian companies on the list, along with Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s state-oil groups, Petroliam Nasional Bhd and PT Pertamina respectively. Asian bidders also include Japan’s two biggest oil explorers, Inpex Corp and Japan Petroleum Exploration Corp; its largest oil refiner, Nippon Oil Corp; its second-biggest trading company, Mitsui & Co; its biggest producer of natural gas from local fields, Teikoku Oil Ltd; and its fourth-largest trading company, Itochu CorpAlgeria’s state-owned group Sonatrach is the only company from Africa. Brazil’s Petroleo Brasileiro SA may bid from South America.
Libya has proven crude-oil reserves of 39bn barrels. It believes potential reserves may be triple that amount. Only a quarter of its territory is covered by agreements with oil companies.The US sanctions were eased after Libya agreed in 2003 to pay $2.7bn to the families of those killed in the 1988 bombing of a Pan American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, and to end programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Source: Bloomberg
