Eleven companies bidding on Ioannina, Gulf of Patras and Katakolon fields on western Greece
In March 2012, Greece has launched an “open-door” bid round for three acreages in Western Greece in order to help restoring its economy.
By “open door”, Greece wanted to send the message to foreign companies to be welcome to bid.
While modest at the world scale, Greece is producing oil and intends to boost it.
Actually, Greece’s oil production is concentrated in its centre at the Prinos area of the Aegean Sea, near the island of Thassos.
So far few companies were engaged in the exploration and production of oil and gas in Greece.
In the years 2000, the Greek firm Kavala Oil took over production in February 2001, managing to extract 3,000 b/d that it sold to state-controlled Hellenic Petroleum SA (HP).
The UK-based Regal Petroleum held a majority stake in Kavala Oil and found “considerable potential” for reserves to exceed estimates of 227 million barrels.
Regal Petroleum also announced that the Greater Kallirachi field in the North Aegean Sea holds up to 1 billion barrels of light crude.
Third-party reserve auditors confirmed the findings.
Unfortunately, since then the exploration and production in the Aegean Sea appeared to be complicated by lack of agreement between Greece and Turkey delineating continental shelf boundaries.
For this reason, in March 2012, the Greek Ministry of Environment Energy and Climate Change initiated the so called “open door” bid round in three areas located on the western side of Greece.
These fields, Ioannina, Gulf of Patraikos and Katakolon, were selected precisely because of their potential and straight forward availability for exploration and production.
Exploitation periods will be up to 25 years upon declaration of commerciality with possibility of extension.
Bidders could submit offer for one or more fields before July 2nd 2012.
Eleven companies submitted offers for three fields
The local Energean Oil & Gas SA (Energean), based in Athens, is actually the only operator of Oil and Gas in Greece with the Prinos and South Kavala fields, where it holds a 100% interest.
Source: Petroleum Services Group at Deloitte
Energean announced its participation in the Greek “open door” process for the three acreages of western Greece.
In case of award, Energean should be the operator and has teamed up with different partners for each block.
From the bids submitted on July 2nd, 2012, the competition for each acreage is looking like the following:
Ioannina onshore field
– Energean (80%) with Canadian Petra Petroleum and Schlumberger as Strategic Technical Partner
– Edison from Italy, together with Melrose Resources from UK, and Greek Petroleum, representing HP interests
– Chariot Oil & Gas from UK is bidding on its own for Ioannia.
– Arctic Hunter Energy from Vancouver, BC, in joint venture with Texan KO Enterprise applied for Ioannina.
Gulf of Patras (Patraikos Gulf) offshore field
– Energean with UK-based Trajan Oil & Gas (Trajan) and Schlumberger as technical partner
– Edison from Italy, together with Melrose Resources from UK, and Greek Petroleum, representing HP interests
Katakolo offshore field
– Energean with UK-based Trajan Oil & Gas (Trajan) and Schlumberger as technical partner
– Edison from Italy, together with Melrose Resources from UK, and Greek Petroleum, representing HP interests
– The local Greek Energy Venture took position for the offshore Katakolo field.
For the Greek Government, these eleven companies (Energean, Petra, Trajan, Schlumberger, Edison, Melrose Resources, Greek Petroleum, Chariot, Arctic Hunter Energy, KO Enterprise and Greek Energy Venture) in competition for the Ioannina, Gulf of Patras and Katakolo fields are sending a good sign to develop a local oil and gas industry on Greece on fast track.
