Somalia favours firms with pre-1991 deals for oil exploration

[NGONGE]

By Sarah Young

 

LONDON (Reuters) - Somalia, hoping to share in East Africa's oil and gas boom, has invited back international oil companies that held exploration licences before civil war broke out two decades ago, an adviser to the government said.

 

Abdullahi Haider, a senior adviser to Somalia's Ministry of Energy, said the country would honour contracts signed prior to 1991 with oil majors including Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Chevron.

 

"They will be given priority," Haider said of the companies that had signed exploration deals before the conflict.

 

Somalia will offer onshore and offshore exploration blocks to companies in a licencing round early next year, Haider added, a process that would enable new companies to come to the country as well as those with permits from the 1980s.

 

"I've seen so many people who are very much interested like Shell, like Chevron. I've met them here and they expressed very high interest," he said in an interview on the sidelines of a conference in London on Tuesday.

 

The government had sent a letter to the companies inviting them to come and negotiate on new contract terms, he added.

 

Somalia inaugurated a new president in mid-September in the first such ceremony for over 20 years, prompting hopes that it had turned a corner after a regionally-brokered, United Nations-backed effort to end fighting in which tens of thousands of people were killed.

 

The country hopes exploration by major oil companies will enable it to participate in the excitement over a string of discoveries in East Africa that have aroused expectations the region will become an important energy supplier.

 

Should companies choose to return, they will negotiate with the government over converting the old royalty-based contracts into production sharing agreements.

 

Any companies that signed oil exploration deals after 1991 could negotiate but would not be given priority, he said.

 

Somalia also hopes to resolve a maritime border dispute with its southern neighbour, Kenya.

 

The disagreement between the two has threatened to upend some exploration rights that Kenya has granted to oil and gas companies including France's Total and Texas-based Anadarko.

 

"This dispute can be regulated in a friendly way," Haider said.

 

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE89200L20121003?sp=true

[NGONGE]

Expect the Imam to start coughing any time now.

[Jacaylbaro]

,,,, PM fever plus this ?? ,,,,,,,,

[SayidSomal]

NGONGE;876444 wrote:

Expect the Imam to start coughing any time now.

Imam: - ehm, ehm ..... straighten your rows and come close together, for indeed I see you behind my back.

[NGONGE]

^^ There may be trouble ahead,

But while there's constitution and moonlight,

And love and Puntland,

Let's face the music and dance.

 

Before the fiddlers have fled,

Before they ask us to pay the bill,

And while we still have that chance,

Let's face the music and dance.

 

Soon, we'll be without the moon,

Humming a different tune, and then,

There may be teardrops to shed,

So while there's constitution and moonlight,

And love and Puntland,

Let's face the music and dance.

[General Duke]

Abdullahi Haider, a senior adviser to Somalia's Ministry of Energy.... who is he?

[NGONGE]

^^ It'll probably be the second question in the letter the Imam is about to draft.

[SayidSomal]

Runba nimaan ku baydhayn ibleys, barale weeyaane

 

Buusuhu belaayiyo hadduu, been ka tegi waayo

 

Inaan dhegaha loo balalinayn, ba’a ee yow sheega

[General Duke]

Oh I think Sarah Young & yourself have been duped.. the Imaam has 99 problems but this ain't 1..

[SayidSomal]

NGONGE;876479 wrote:

^^ It'll probably be the second question in the letter the Imam is about to draft.

[Somalia]

NGONGE;876444 wrote:

Expect the Imam to start coughing any time now.

There's nothing to worry about, there's only water in his backyard so the most he will do is 'boil'.

[Chimera]

^Add another 20 exploration wells and you'll have a commercial discovery in Puntland mid 2013. The likes of Range, Emperor and AfricaOil should be given priority at the licencing round, they invested tens of millions of dollars when most of the world wrote Somalia off as a no-go zone.

[N.O.R.F]

^They're only there to discover before selling the rights to a bigger company.