Oil and Gas - Mergers and Acquisition Review: Nexen plans to follow in Encana's footsteps in fin...

Oil and Gas - Mergers and Acquisition Review: Nexen plans to follow in Encana's footsteps in fin...: "Nexen Inc has initiated a process to seek a joint venture partner for various portions of the company’s northeast British Colum..."

Oil and gas companies go diving into Trinidad waters – Plan to spud 25 wells in 2011

Drilling activities onshore and offshore Trinidad & Tobago is said to increase this year as players from the oil and industry plan to spud more than 25 wells in 2011, up from five wells in 2010 and just seven wells in 2009.

Here‘s what is on the menu….

Petrotrin

• State-run Petrotrin is planning to drill 16 wells on its Trinmar acreage from March 2011 with one exploration well, four appraisal wells and remaining eleven to be development wells.

Parex Resources

• Parex Resources is targeting a three to five-well drilling programme as well as testing its Snowcap-1 and deepening the Firecrown-1 well on its Moruga block
• It is also planning a pair of 4500-foot exploration wells on its onshore Central Block at Cribo-1 and Mapepire-1

BP

• BPTT, the Trinidad & Tobago unit of BP, plans to drill least seven new wells and complete a well spudded in 2010.

EOG Resources

• EOG will drill a total of eight wells in 2011 at its offshore Toucan field out of which seven wells are development wells while the eighth well is a step out well.

Niko Resources 

• Niko Resources is planning to drill three wells on offshore Block 2ab in August 2011.

Bayfield Energy

• Bayfield Energy is planning to carry out a seven-well exploration and appraisal programme over the course of next two years on its Galeota block, with drilling scheduled to begin in Q3 2011.

For more details please visit:
  http://docsearch.derrickpetroleum.com/research/q/BP.html
  http://docsearch.derrickpetroleum.com/research/q/Niko%20Resources.html
  http://docsearch.derrickpetroleum.com/research/q/EOG%20Resources.html

Nexen plans to follow in Encana's footsteps in finding a joint-venture partner

Nexen Inc has initiated a process to seek a joint venture partner for various portions of the company’s northeast British Columbia shale gas acreage. The company has engaged Bank of America Merrill Lynch as its exclusive advisor on this sale process.

Northeast BC shale gas:
-- 300,000 acres (100% working interest) split over three areas of Horn River, Cordova and Liard
-- Horn River is median depth and GIP; Cordova is shallower, lower GIP; Liard is deeper, potentially higher GIP
-- Delivered drilling, fracing and completions program at industry-leading pace with a 100% success rate
-- Successfully drilled and brought on-stream of eight-well pad and commenced drilling another nine-well pad late in the year; New industry record of 3.5 fracs/day on our 8-well pad
-- 8-well pad program adding 50 MMcf/d in early 2011
-- ~4 to 15 Tcf of contingent resource in the Horn River and Cordova basins and 5 to 23 Tcf of prospective resource in the Liard basin
-- The company is also progressing plans to drill an 18-well pad in the second half of 2011. First shale gas production from the nine-well pad is expected in Q4-2011, while production from the 18-well pad would be in late 2012.

To know more about shale. Please click

http://docsearch.derrickpetroleum.com/research/q/Canada%20shale.html

Implied reserves value recovered in 2010, stronger for oil than for gas

On a worldwide basis, the implied reserves values, $/2P reserves (entitlement), recovered largely by the end of 2009 and stayed at similar levels throughout 2010, but still below the high levels of 2007-2008.

Implied reserves by country and by hydrocarbon type is readily available for US and Canada whereas the rest of the world gives limited data sets for statistical analysis.

For the US, implied proved oil reserves values appear robust with 2010 full year average $15.6/boe for proved reserves, whereas gas reserves values are still below 2007 and 2008 levels albeit up from 2009 levels.

For Canada, the separation of implied reserves values for gas and oil widened further in 2010, following the last years’ trend. For the full year, the average price of oil deals was $16.5/boe for 2P reserves and of gas reserves was $9.4/boe.

Transaction metrics for selected deals outside North America

Ecopetrol plans exploration led production growth

Ecopetrol is planning to spend about $80 billion from 2011 to 2020, with 80% of it devoted to the upstream segment. The Company expects to produce 670,000 barrels daily by 2015, with a goal of a million barrels a day by 2020.

With $1.293 billion capex allocated to 2011, 95% of the investment plan is slated to unfold in Colombia, while the remaining 5% will go to the Company’s operations in Peru, Brazil and the United States.

The Company will finance most of this through internal cash generation, but will also issue up to $23 billion in debt and sell an additional $6.5 billion in equity to the public.

2011…

• Ecopetrol plans to drill 37 exploratory wells in 2011; 28 in Colombia, 4 in  the US GOM, 4 in Brazil and 1 in Peru  
• It also plans to explore the development of non-conventional resources such as shale gas in Colombia

Leverage, Growth and Sustainabilty 

 Colombia …

• Ecopetrol is continuing to invest in Colombia and, along with Talisman Energy and  recently purchased properties in Colombia owned by BP
• Ecopetrol holds 28 E&P contracts which span across an area of about 17.6 million hectares

…. and the Unconventionals 

 Love thy neighbours!

• Ecopetrol has exploration plans in its neighbouring countries like Peru and Brazil which also hold an attractive oil and gas framework

• In Peru, the Company is working with Petrobras to develop Lot 117 in the onshore area of the country

Looking offshore....

Ecopetrol may not be well known among most investors but this won't be the case for long if it successfully executes its strategic plan for the next decade which will transform its identity from a national oil company to a leading player in the energy industry!

Gazprom buys half of ENI’s Elephant stake and says doing business in Libya is easy

Gazprom cashes out approximately $163 million to acquire the 50% of Eni's stake (33.3%) in the consortium developing the Elephant oilfield in Libya. The Elephant field contains 700 million barrels of estimated recoverable oil reserves. The field infrastructure is fully developed and comprises power supply, oil treatment and transmission facilities to the oil export terminal. This agreement is part of the strategic partnership signed between Eni and Gazprom in 2006 which envisages the commitment of both parties to jointly develop projects in the entire gas chain.

Projects with Gazprom in Libya

In 2006 and 2007 Gazprom was an active participant of international bidding procedures for the right to explore the most geologically promising licensed blocks. Based on the bidding results Gazprom obtained exploration rights for licensed blocks 19 and 64. In addition, following the asset swap deal with BASF in December 2007, Gazprom acquired a 49% stake in Libya’s oil concessions C96 and C97.

Easy to do business in Libya- says Gazprom

Gazprom last year said, “Libya is becoming the key priority of Gazprom Neft in Africa. On the whole we are planning to become a serious player in the Libyan market by actively participating in other projects as well; what those projects will be, we’re not prepared to tell yet; we are making an estimate and this is confidential information. If we manage it, we expect to increase the company's share in production of Libyan oil "to the critical mass", producing at least 10% of the country's oil”.

The advantages of Libyan business for Gazprom Neft are obvious – production here is done on land, and our company has extensive experience in this area. In addition, in Libya there are no political or economic sanctions against foreign business – any contractor can come and start working. And, logistically speaking, traveling to Libya is simpler and faster than, for example, to countries of West Africa, which are also potentially interesting for us – here we can pick up experience of working on the shelf, which is really necessary for Gazprom Neft.

Santos 2010 production down 8%; two-thirds of that due to flooding

Santos reported a production of 134.5 kboepd, 8% lower primarily due to wet weather and flood events in Central Australia which reduced Cooper Basin production by 7.95 kboepd, partially offset by stronger gas production in Western Australia and Indonesia. Higher commodity prices were evident across the company’s portfolio in 2010 and drove sales revenue to $2.2 billion, up 2% than 2009.

Results highlights

- Production 49.9mmboe, down 8%

- 2P reserves increased to 1,445 million barrels

- Sales 59.2 mmboe, down 1%.  Average oil and gas prices up 11% and 5% respectively

- Plans to achieve production exposed to oil price from 27% in 2010 to 70% in 2015