Eni, PTTEP Awarded UAE Block
Italy's Eni and Thailand's PTTEP have been awarded a concession for the UAE's offshore block 3 and will invest some dirhams 1.51bn ($412mn) in exploration, Abu Dhabi's national oil company Adnoc reported on December 21.
The award by Adnoc has been approved by Abu Dhabi's supreme petroleum council (SPC). The initial exploration period runs for nine years but Eni and PTTEP will have the right to a 35-year production concession if they make a commercial discovery. Eni said separately it would take a 70% position in the concession spanning 11,660 km2, while PTTEP would take 30%.
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Adnoc earlier this month awarded a block concession to US-based Occidental following the company's latest bidding round, which kicked off in May last year. The company claims the acreage it is offering holds billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of gas.
According to Eni, new start-of-the-art 3D seismic data has been acquired at part of block 3. The area is near large oil and gas fields either in production or under development, creating potential synergies with existing infrastructure. Eni and PTTEP secured offshore blocks 1 and 2 in January last year, and the Italian major also won some acreage onshore Sharjah that month.
The latest award "represents a further important step towards the realisation of Eni's strategy to become a leading actor in the development and production in Abu Dhabi," Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi said. Block 3 is "a challenging opportunity that can unlock significant value thanks to exploration and appraisal of shallow and deep reservoirs."
Eni has been working in Abu Dhabi since 2018 when it acquired a 10% stake in the Umm Shaif and Nasr Offshore concession, a 5% interest in the Lower Zakum concession and a 25% position in the Ghasha concession. It currently produces around 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent/day in the emirate.