The Italian oil company ENI has bought from Petrogal a 70% stake in three offshore exploration permits for blocs off the Alentejo coast. Petrogal is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Portuguese company Galp Energia
The paperwork for the deal was signed today by the Minister for the Environment and Energy in Lisbon. The exploration permits were awarded to Petrogal in 2007 by the Portuguese State and ran out in October this year.
ENI now is partnering Galp which has reduced its involvement in the exploration blocs to 30%. The new partnership has been given an extra year by the Portuguese government to explore for oil in the deep water areas until October 2015.
Galp has been looking for a partner to share the cost of oil exploration but needed to get an extra year from the government.
This was easy enough to achieve as the Minister for the Environment and Energy, Jorge Moreia da Silva, dropped the Environment part of his job title a while ago and was keen to sign.
Galp, led by Ferreira de Oliveira, now takes a step back from managing the exploration process as ENI takes over as majority partner.
Galp claims already to have spent around €70 million in seismic analyses and sea bed studies in the Alentejo basin and the next phase involves the drilling of exploration wells in one or more of the Lavagante, Santola and Gamba blocs which cover an area of 9,100 km².
Eni recently has been selling off its shares in Galp, down to a current shareholding of 8% which its plans to sell in 2015.
In teh Algarve, Repsol and Partex are unaffected and will continue to explore along the southern coastline while the Italian owned partnership starts drilling early next year off the western shores of the Alentejo.
ENI is a major company in finding, producing, transporting, transforming and marketing oil and gas. ENI says that its personnel ‘have a passion for challenges, continuous improvement, excellence and particularly value people, the environment and integrity.’
The government has decided that there is no need for environmental impact assessments for the Alentejo or Algarve coastal regions as the oil exploration is conveniently, too far offshore to come under such land-based annoyances.
The environmental aspects of the oil and gas business are therefore being handled by the oil companies themselves.
