Norwegian state oil and gas company Statoil was still focusing on Indonesia despite several petroleum giants relinquishing their blocks after years of unprofitable exploration, an official has said.
Statoil’s spokesman for Indonesia, Mochamad Tommy Hersyaputera, told The
Jakarta Post over the weekend that it was still keen to explore the
deep waters in the eastern regions of Indonesia.
“We are seeking
new opportunities to tap into new deep-water projects in Indonesia. We
still believe the country has new hydrocarbon reserves,” he said in a
telephone interview.
Currently, the Stavanger-based energy firm
holds 90 percent of participating interest and operatorship of the
Halmahera-2 block, which spans waters off North Maluku and West Papua.
Tommy
said the firm was planning to conduct either a 2-D or 3-D seismic
survey this June to determine the prospect of profit-making hydrocarbon
reserves at the Halmahera-2 block, for which Canada’s Niko Resources
owns the remaining 10 percent stake.
In addition, Statoil
currently owns a participating interest in several offshore oil and gas
blocks in Indonesia, all of which are situated in eastern regions. The
blocks include Niko-operated West Papua-4, Halmahera-Kofiau and the
North Makassar Strait as well as Italy’s ENI-operated North Ganal.
Earlier
this year, the firm, which is listed on both the Oslo Stock Exchange
and the New York Stock Exchange, returned their Karama block in Makassar
Strait, Sulawesi, to the Indonesian government following three years of
dry
exploration.
Statoil previously allocated US$212 million
to develop the offshore block for which they won licensing in 2007.
They drilled three wells and spent $174.1 million only to conclude that
the basin was “uneconomic”.
The previous loss figure was taken from data by the upstream oil and gas regulatory special task force, SKKMigas, in January.
Tommy added that the company had instead spent around $271 million for its business expansion in the Karama block.
“We realize that this is a high-risk business so we do not see it as a loss,” he said.
The
2001 Oil and Gas Law stipulates that money spent on exploration will
not be reimbursed by the government under the cost-recovery scheme. This
scheme applies only to contractors successfully entering the production
phase.
Earlier this year, US-based ExxonMobil, US-based
Marathon, US-based Hess and Netherlands-based Tately NV all decided to
return their blocks in the Makassar Strait after deeming the basins
uneconomic.
US-based ConocoPhillips, which owns a 60 percent
participating interest and operatorship in the Kuma block in Makassar,
is currently in the process of returning the block they won three years
ago.
SKKMigas secretary Gde Pradnyana confirmed that
ConocoPhillips, which operates the South Natuna Sea block that produced
90 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) last year, had
indeed decided to relinquish its Makassar Strait block.
“I think
it is normal for contractors who fail to find profit-making reserves in
their respective working areas to return the blocks to the government,”
he said.