Chinese oil giant China National Petroleum Corp. and France's Total SA (TOT) Tuesday finalized an agreement with Tethys Petroleum Ltd. (TPL) to develop oil and gas assets in Tajikistan, with China cited as a key market for future exports.
Chinese oil giant China National Petroleum Corp. and
France
's
Total SA (TOT) Tuesday finalized an agreement with Tethys Petroleum Ltd. (TPL)
to develop oil and gas assets in
Tajikistan
, with
China
cited
as a key market for future exports.
The venture is another piece in a jigsaw of projects being put together by
China's state oil companies to diversify their energy supplies through
investments in domestic and foreign oil and gas assets and the construction of
a global network of refineries, pipelines and receiving terminals.
London-and-Toronto-listed Tethys, which is also developing oil and gas fields
in
Kazakhstan
and
Uzbekistan
,
first announced plans to bring in partners for its Bokhtar project in
Tajikistan
last
October.
In December it revealed a draft farm-out agreement and production-sharing pact
with CNPC unit China National Oil and Gas Exploration and Development Corp.,
and Total, each taking a one-third stake in the concession which Tethys has
said may contain 3.22 trillion cubic meters of gas and 8.5 billion barrels of
oil. The companies signed the deal in the Tajik capital
Dushanbe
Tuesday, after the government gave its go-ahead.
"We believe the Bokhtar PSC is a world-class asset with enormous potential,"
Tethys Executive Chairman David Robson told The Wall Street Journal. The first
phase of exploration will cost $80 million-$100 million, and if that is
successful, investment up to 2020 "will be very large, in the billions of
dollars," he said.
Mr. Robson said the Tajik government has also added a further 1,186 square
kilometers of highly prospective acreage not previously included in the
project, which could add to the block's reserves by 10%.
Total Exploration & Production senior vice-president Michael Borrell, in a
statement, said the agreement "positions Total in one of the world's most
prolific gas basins."
Tajikistan
imports over 90% of the oil and gas it uses, and the government is keen to
develop its domestic resources, many of which lie in the south-west of the
country in an extension of the Amu-Darya basin which feeds huge gas fields in
neighboring
Uzbekistan
and
Turkmenistan
.
"
Tajikistan
's
reserves could meet
China
's
natural gas consumption for 24 years. I think in terms of the early development,
it will probably be three years away, and the full development in terms of
export of gas, maybe by about 2020," Mr. Robson said.
CNPC, the country's top oil and gas producer, has been importing gas from
Central
Asia
since 2010 through a Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan-China pipeline
completed in 2010, supplying fuel to the industrialized east and south
China
. Chinese
companies are also building a network of liquefied natural gas import terminals
along its coast.
China
plans
to boost the share of natural gas in its energy mix to 10% by 2020, from under
5% in 2010, aiming to cut dependency on coal which meets 70% of its energy
needs.
Part of this will be met by
China
's
huge shale gas reserves, although large-scale production of shale gas isn't
expected before late this decade.
CNPC is close to completing twin pipelines through
Myanmar
to
southwestern
China
capable of carrying 440,000 barrels a day of overseas crude and 12 billion
cubic meters of
Myanmar
's
natural gas a year. Another project, still on the drawing board, is to pipe in
gas from Russian fields.
Chinese companies CNPC, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (SNP) and Cnooc
Ltd. (CEO) have racked up a string of major oil and gas acquisitions in recent
years, including Cnooc's purchase of Canada's Nexen Inc. for US$15.1 billion.
Cnooc and Canadian energy firm Husky Energy Inc. (HSE.T) are developing three
deepwater gas fields under the South China Sea, with commercial production due
to start later this year.
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