PetroSA is hoping to buy up Sabre Oil & Gas’s stakes in the Deep Tano and West Cape Three Points Block, which contain the giant Jubilee field, offshore Ghana.
The South African state hydrocarbon company is also negotiating for equity in ENI’s share of Mozambique’s deepwater gas finds.
Sabre Oil & Gas holds 4.05% in the Deepwater Tano block and 1.85% in West Cape Three Points. The 600Million barrel Jubilee Field straddles these two blocks. Those equities were the very target of proposed buy over by Kosmos Energy, an American minnow which is one of the four partners in Deepwater Tano and West Cape Three
points. The selling price, as of March 2012, was $365Million. The fact that the South Africans are now talking about the same asset, simply means that the Kosmos-Sabre deal didn’t sail through.
PetroSA, which is aggressively looking at access near-producing blocks, has been in talks with ENI, regarding the Italian giant’s 50Tcf gas finds offshore Mozambique. PetroSA and ENI have a memorandum of understanding to collaborate anywhere one of them has a foothold. But aside from ENI’s stake, PetroSA is hoping to participate in Mozambique’s next bidding round for blocks expected in Mozambique towards the end of 2012.
PetroSA has a mandate to deliver at least 25% of South Africa’s liquid fuel needs by 2012. But as an E&P company, PetroSA is desperately resource poor. It has some gas producing asset in South Africa but produces nary a drop of oil. The company walked out of its only crude oil producing asset- a partnership with Monipulo, theNigerian Independent -last year. PetroSA is looking forward to commence some more gas production in South
Africa in 2013 and to produce from a small, heavy oil field in Venezuela in the medium term.
