Cairn May Farm into Mauritania
UK producer Cairn Energy disclosed September 11 that it may partner Total offshore Mauritania in northwest Africa.
The news came as Cairn disclosed a net 1H loss of $500mn chiefly because of its problems in India; that compared with a 1H2017 profit of $71mn.
Mauritania, which would be a new entry for Cairn, has already yielded major gas finds for Kosmos/BP, which jointly plan to produce first gas in late 2021 from a floating LNG project there, subject to final investment decision (FID) later this year.
Not only Total but also Shell and ExxonMobil have exploration acreage offshore Mauritania.
Total operates two blocks offshore Mauritania. In its 1H results, Cairn did not say which licence it may farm into, merely that it has an “option agreement to acquire 30% working interest from Total to enter a large offshore exploration block [subject to government approvals] upon a well decision following ongoing seismic acquisition and evaluation programme.”
Cairn is operator with 40% of the SNE oil field project offshore neighbouring Senegal. In its 1H results, it expected the SNE development plan to be approved later this year along with formal transfer of its operatorship to Woodside, with a final investment decision due to follow in 2019. The sale by ConocoPhillips of its 35% SNE stake to Woodside is contested by another partner FAR which referred it to international arbitration early last year. Eventual production from SNE could reach 100,000 b/d oil (at 100% equity) sometime in the 2020s.
Cairn also remarked that it lately entered Suriname and Cote d’Ivoire, the latter as a partner of Tullow Oil - both oil-prone.
Cairn’s net 1H2018 production was 14,377 barrels of oil equivalent benefited from a ramp-up of its UK North Sea Catcher and Kraken oil fields.
Among losses, Cairn cited a 1H writedown of $230.8m following a sale to Vedanta of shares that the Indian government had seized plus $64.5mn of dividends in 1H seized by New Delhi. It said that total dividends from Cairn India now seized by the Indian government over its long-running dispute are $161.9m.