OVL buys 30% stake in Namibian oil block from UK’s Tullow Oil

Industry:    2017-07-04

ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC), on Monday said it has acquired 30% interest in an oil block, off Namibia, from UK’s Tullow Oil.

OVL did not disclose the deal value. Tullow Oil held 65% interest in the Namibian Petroleum Exploration License (PEL) 37, covering three blocks. Pancontinental Namibia (Pty) Ltd holds 30% interest and the remaining 5% is with Paragon Oil and Gas. OVL said it has “signed definitive binding agreements with Tullow Namibia Ltd (Tullow), a wholly owned subsidiary of Tullow Oil plc, on June 28, 2017 for acquiring 30% participating interest in Namibia PEL 37 for Blocks 2112A, 2012B and 2113B out of Tullow’s existing participating interest of 65% in the license”.

Tullow will continue to remain operator after the acquisition, which is subject to satisfaction of customary conditions precedents including approvals of Namibian regulatory authorities and joint venture partners, the company said in a statement. “The completion of the present transaction would mark OVL’s entry in Namibian offshore and is consistent with its strategic objective of adding high impact exploration and production assets to its existing exploration and production portfolio,” it said. PEL 37 covers three adjacent blocks over 17,000 sq. km in the central Walvis Basin offshore Namibia.

To date, four large prospects and three large leads have been mapped in detail. They have potential for combined prospective resources of more than 900 million barrels of oil (recoverable). OVL is India’s largest international oil and gas exploration and production company. It has 38 projects in 17 countries including Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Kazakhstan, Mozambique, Myanmar, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, Venezuela, Vietnam and New Zealand.

It currently produces about 285,000 barrels of oil and oil equivalent gas per day and has total oil and gas reserves (2P) of about 704 million tonnes of oil equivalent as on 1 April 2017.

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