Arabian
Oil Company, Ltd. ("AOC", Head Office: Shinagawa-ku,
Tokyo, Director-President: Kazutoshi Hoyano, Capital: 13,000
Million Yen) has recently obtained an official approval
of Ministry of Petroleum of the Government of Egypt for
proceeding to development phase of the field discovered
on the Northwest October (NWO) Block in the Gulf of Suez,
and commenced FEED (Front End Engineering Design), which
is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year 2008.
AOC aims at commencing commercial production in the first
half of Fiscal Year 2010. Earlier, AOC had concluded the
Concession Agreement with the Egyptian Government and Egyptian
General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) for oil and gas exploration
and exploitation over the NWO Block effectively in July,
2005, and the first exploratory well successfully confirmed
of oil In September, 2006. Since then, AOC prepared its
provisional development plan and conducted discussions and
consultations with EGPC thereof.
For
proceeding to development phase, AOC decided to diversify
some part of its working interest in the NWO Block to a
potential farmee who has more operation experiences in the
Gulf of Suez in terms of improving the project value and
economics by utilizing their knowhow. Based on the above
decision, AOC was engaged in the farm-out process with the
appointed consultant of Stellar Energy Advisors Limited
and finally selected Egypt based PICO International Petroleum
(PICO) as the most preferable farmee. AOC has recently signed
the Sale and Purchase Agreement with PICO assigning 50%
of its working interest to them. AOC remains to be an operator
for the project and proceed it.
PICO
is an oil development company owning its working interests
over the several oil fields in Egypt including blocks where
they participate as an operator. They are considered to
be an ideal joint partner for NWO project because of their
great deal of experience and knowledge on the operations
of oil fields in the Gulf of Suez.
