Libya to offer blocks mid

Libya to offer blocks mid-year

London (Platts International Gas Report)--24May2004


Libya's National Oil Corp (NOC) plans to offer eight oil and natural gas 
exploratory blocks scattered throughout the country's onshore and offshore 
areas to foreign oil companies in its EPSA-IV bidding round later this year, 
Tarek Hassan-Beck, NOC director of planning, said May 5. 

The blocks, which represent the first new opportunity for US oil companies to 
participate in Libya's upstream in 18 years, would be offered via production-
sharing contracts, Hassan-Beck said at the Offshore Technology Conference in 
Houston, Texas.

Bidders would propose specific production terms when they presented their 
offers to NOC, but the production stage would likely comprise splits between 
private companies and NOC of 40-60 or 30-70, he said.

Libya's eight exploratory blocks being offered, probably around mid-year, 
represent a mere handful of the country's 250 total blocks in seven basins. 
Two blocks each will be available in the Mediterranean offshore, the western 
Libyan Murzuq basin, and the prolific Sirt basin in central Libya.

In addition, one block each is being offered in the natural gas prone western 
Ghadames Basin and the Cyrenaica/Botnan Basin in the northeast. The planning 
director said the blocks were selected so an offering was available in each 
area of Libya.

Libya's production currently totaled about 1.3-mil b/d, while production 
capacity totaled 1.8-mil b/d, Hassan-Beck said. New finds should raise 
production capacity to 2-mil b/d by 2007, a figure Libya hoped to use to lobby
OPEC for a higher quota, he said. Libya's current export quota is 1.26-mil 
b/d.

This story was published in Platts International Gas Report

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