Gazprom Neft seeking Northern European shelf assets
MOSCOW. Jan 14 (Interfax) - Gazprom Neft , which is not allowed to make use of mineral resources on Russia's continental shelf, is interested in the possibility of being involved in Northern European offshore projects.
Company subsidiary LLC Gazprom Neft-Sakhalin late last year announced a tender for consulting services in the search for prospective assets on the Northern European shelf, the Gazprom Neft procurement website says.
Gazprom Neft intends to focus on studying the markets of Norway, the UK, the Netherlands, and Denmark. The company reckons that the tender winners in each country will provide an analysis of the normative, tax, and industrial aspects of a potential organic move onto those markets.
Tender winners will have the job of compiling a list of ten assets or stakes in the most promising projects in these countries and offering proposals for the best options of obtaining assets or companies - the price set at up to $4 billion.
For each possible deal Gazprom Neft will have to have data on an owner's readiness to sell or swap assets and the proposed investment cost of a deal. For selected prospective deals there will have to be possible proposals for owners for the purchase of their assets.
Gazprom Neft "awaits real examples of companies that were or were not able to obtain licenses in recent years in the indicated countries, and an explanation of the reasons for success or failure. Furthermore, Gazprom Neft is counting on an analysis of various groups of players of Northern European countries and their classification considering the similarity of their portfolio and strategies," the company said.
Gazprom Neft will also charge a tender winner with orienting the company to which country or group of companies needs to be focused on, to what shelf regions deserve the most attention.
The oil company also expects the formation of a general evaluation of the situation and recommendations for strategies in those four countries in the period from 2014 to 2020.
Outside of the Russian Federation, Gazprom Neft currently has negative experience working on shelf projects. Gazprom Neft, GEPetrol and the country's Ministry of Mines, Industry and Energy signed an agreement in the summer of 2010 to work on two offshore blocks, the combined resources of which were estimated at 110 million tonnes at the time. Oil production was expected to peak at 6 million-7 million tonnes. Gazprom Neft has said it might invest about $3 billion in projects in Equatorial Guinea over 30-35 years. But Gazprom Neft said about a year ago that it had not found commercially viable reserves at its existing blocks in Equatorial Guinea and asked the African country's government to allocate new blocks.
Gazprom Neft has acquired a 30% stake in a production sharing agreement project in Cuba in which the Russian company's partner is Malaysia's Petronas. The companies planned to explore four blocks in the Gulf of Mexico
Only the state-controlled Rosneft and Gazprom are operating off Russia's shores. Gazprom Neft, as a Gazprom subsidiary, has obtained the rights to work on Russia's shelf, but the Natural Resources Ministry at this time sees the company simply as an operator, not as a company with the right to hold shelf section licenses.
Gazprom Neft is already the operator of the Prirazlomnoye and Dolginskoye shelf deposits. It was reported that the company was engaged in negotiations to operate the Gazprom offshore deposit in the Chukchi Sea.
