Canada's Questerre Ups Exposure to Jordan's Oil Shale

Canadian Questerre Energy has signed an agreement with Whitehorn Resources which gives the former an option to acquire over 280 km² prospective for oil shale in Jordan, the company said May 11.

In an update on its oil shale project in Jordan, earlier this month, the company stated that discovery on its oil shale acreage in Jordan was recently assessed by an independent qualified resource evaluator, Millcreek Mining Group. The testing was conducted in conjunction with Red Leaf Resources in which Questerre said it has bought a 30% stake.

The company already has an exclusive right to conduct exploration, engineering and development over 380 km² in the Isfir-Jafr region of Jordan, about 200 km south of the capital, Amman.

Questerre CEO Michael Binnion said: “This investment gives us a minority control block in Red Leaf. They now have over $100mn in cash and are committed to their business plan of commercialising EcoShale technology and supporting their license holders to develop their projects. We will also have access to significant additional oil shale resources in Jordan through our agreement with Whitehorn.”

The company is finding a way to commercialise the oil shale project in a $50/b to $70/b environment as it is leveraging its expertise gained through early exposure to shale and other non-conventional reservoirs. The company has base production and reserves in the tight oil Bakken/Torquay of southeast Saskatchewan.  It is bringing on production from its lands in the heart of the high-liquids Montney shale fairway.

Jordan's national electricity generator has a contract to buy gas from Israel's Leviathan field, which was very unpopular with many Jordanians even though it amounts to just 3bn m³ over the lifetime of the contract. Jordan is also an importer of LNG.

Jordan already advancing oil shale-fired power

Two months ago the Attarat Power Company secured a $1.58bn, 15-year debt facility from Chinese financial institutions to support a 554 MW oil shale-fired power plant, the country's first. Attarat is being co-developed at a cost of $2.1bn by Estonian state-owned Eesti Energia, Malaysia's YTL Power International and China's Yudean Group. About 90% of power produced in Estonia is generated from local oil shale. The plant is scheduled to start generating electricity for local consumption in 2019.

Shardul Sharma