State
oil and gas group Petrovietnam has bid for $1.5 billion of ConocoPhillips oil
assets in the East Sea, a senior Petrovietnam official said on Monday.
The Hanoi-based group plans to do its utmost
to acquire the assets, Nguyen Tien Dung, Petrovietnam’s Deputy Chief Executive
Officer, told Reuters on Monday.
“The investment is in our country, so we are
determined, with our largest possible efforts, to buy,” Dung said.
Barclays Capital is the adviser for the bid, a
source with knowledge of the deal said.
ConocoPhillips owns a 23.25 percent stake in a
complex of four fields in block 15-1.
The three oilfields and one gas field include
the Su Tu Den and Su Tu Vang oilfields and two other fields that have not begun
operations, according to Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC), one of the owners of
the block.
Petrovietnam already owns half of block 15-1.
KNOC has 14.2 percent, South Korea’s SK Corp 9 percent and Monaco’s Geopetrol
3.5 percent.
A KNOC official said last week that the South
Korean state-run firm had made no decision yet on whether or not to consider
buying ConocoPhillips’ stake and will decide based on the price made by the
successful bidder.
The US company also owns 36 percent of the
Rang Dong oilfield in block 15-2 in the Cuu Long basin and 16.3 percent in the
Nam Con Son gas pipeline project.
In July, Petrovietnam’s CEO said the company
may buy the ConocoPhillips oil and gas interests in the East Sea to help
protect Vietnam’s territorial water, adding that the US energy firm may sell
the assets as it was scaling back its presence, possibly as part of a
restructuring.
US oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp recently said it
had discovered hydrocarbons in August off central Vietnam.
Russians expanding in Vietnam
Dung said that Russian oil and gas firms are
also expanding their presence in the Southeast Asia country, with three
operating firms -- Gazprom , Zarubezhneft and LUKOIL -- while TNK-BP is now in
the process of taking over assets newly acquired from its shareholder BP Plc .
“This is a good trend,” he added.
British-Russian joint venture TNK-BP will make
its official presence in Vietnam within a few weeks, said Dung.
TNK-BP said on Oct. 19 its subsidiary, TNK
Vietnam, had received the investment license from Vietnam’s Ministry of
Investment and Trade to operate offshore gas Block 06.1, part of the Nam Con
Son Integrated Gas to Power Project.
“Our company sees Vietnam as a very
prospective market and will continue to review opportunities for deepening our
presence in the country,” Maxim Barsky, the deputy chief executive of TNK-BP
who will leave his post on Nov. 1 after overseeing its foreign expansion
campaign, said in the statement.
Russia’s third-largest oil company said it had
acquired from BP a 35 percent stake in the offshore gas and condensate
production Block 06.1, which contains the Lan Tay and Lan Do gas condensate
fields.
Russia’s No.2 crude producer LUKOIL recently
said it had acquired the Hanoi Trough 02 block offshore the northern city of
Hai Phong from Quad Energy.
The firm would drill three wells by early next
year and 12 locations could have promising oil deposits, Aleksander Nekhaev,
Director of Lukoil Overseas Vietnam, said in Hanoi.
Gazprom, the world’s largest natural gas
company, has established a joint venture with Petrovietnam -- Vietgazprom --
which now explores five fields offshore Vietnam, the joint venture said on its
website (www.vgp.zargaz.ru).
Vietsovpetro, a joint venture between Russian
state-run Zarubezhneft and Petrovietnam, has said it will extend cooperation to
20 more years, though its annual oil production will dip to a steady level of
6.0-6.1 million tons from next year, slightly below the expected 2011 output of
6.31 million tons (126,719 bpd).
Thanh Nien/Reuters
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