The contract starts at $250 million and may go up to $750 million, according to the available information; it entails drilling seven wells in the Neptun offshore block.
Petrom and ExxonMobil are conducting exploration works in the block and have already got positive signs of a gas accumulation of up to 84 billion cubic meters. The bidding deadline was January 14, 2013 and the e-licitatie.ro (an electronic public procurement system website) showed winner selection was in progress.
“We are also bidding for the framework contract of ExxonMobil but the winners haven’t been announced yet.” This is the only thing Comanescu had to say in Baku, Azerbaijan on Thursday. The businessman did not specify what tender it was about, but sources on the market say the contract Grup Servicii Petroliere is looking to get has to do with Black Sea drilling.
GSP is already working with ExxonMobil after having won a $0.8 million contract for transportation by sea.
The purpose to all this is to unlock the deepwater hydrocarbon potential of the Black Sea where ExxonMobil is already drilling together with Petrom in a partnership they signed for the Neptun block in 2008.
Early last year, the two companies drilled the first ever deepwater well in the Black Sea, Domino-1 and announced they found a gas accumulation of 42 to 84 billion cubic meters. Romania used some 14 billion cubic meters last year, which means the discovery in the Black Sea alone would be enough to meet domestic demand for four years at a recovery factor of 70%. On the other hand, the same amount, about 60 billion cubic meters would ensure Romania’s independence from Russian gas imports for two decades.
Although the investment in the Neptun block, if it turns out to commercially viable, should reach $3 billion to $10 billion according ExxonMobil, some of the work may be given to foreign companies.
ExxonMobil is already working with Romanian companies, such as Petrom and Romgaz (state-run gas producer), with which it signed a partnership for the Midia block in the Black Sea, John Knapp, head of ExxonMobil’s Romanian subsidiary, said at ZF Power Summit ’13. However, although Romania has a lot of experience in on-shore drilling, offshore drilling requires a different set of services, hence the need for foreign companies to provide part of them.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)