Morocco is enjoying an oil and gas drilling bonanza, with 27 wells planned this year, a senior energy official said on Wednesday, amid growing foreign interest in the kingdom’s potential offshore reserves.
“In 2013 and 2014 we have witnessed an unprecedented period of growth” in upstream activity, Amina Benkhadra, the head of Morocco’s Office of Hydrocarbons and Mining, told an energy conference in Marrakesh.
This includes a vast amount of seismic data being gathered, and 27 wells being drilled this year onshore and offshore, compared with four last year, she told hundreds of industry representatives.
The North African country has made no significant discoveries to date, importing virtually all its energy needs and battling to reduce its unaffordable oil subsidies.
SUBSEA POTENTIAL
However, improved offshore drilling technology, a benign investment climate and similar geology in prospective regions elsewhere in the Atlantic, like Canada’s Nova Scotia, are encouraging companies to search for Morocco’s potential subsea riches, oil executives say.
There are now 34 oil companies operating on 131 exploration and five reconnaissance permits, Benkhadra said, when 15 years ago the country had just a handful of foreign partners exploring for oil and gas.
Reflecting the industry’s growing interest in Morocco and boosting the government’s hopes, Chevron and BP arrived last year, joining the two other major players in the upstream, Repsol and Total.
Chevron is due to start seismic shooting next week on acreage it acquired off the coast of Agadir, while drilling started in March at one of the three deepwater exploration blocks that BP farmed into.
SMALLER PLAYERS
Other smaller oil firms active in the exploration frontier country include British-based explorers Cairn Energy and Gulfsands Petroleum, Turkey’s Genel Energy and Texas-based Kosmos Energy, which found the Jubilee oil field off Ghana.
Kosmos, which sold stakes to BP in three of its offshore blocks, also has acreage in the waters of the disputed Western Sahara, where it plans to sink a well later this year or early next year, despite objections by the pro-independence Polisario Front.
The drilling conducted in March on its Foum Assaka block, which was unsuccessful, took place in water depths of 2,000m, the deepest offshore well so far drilled in Morocco.
UNEXPLORED
Carl Atallah, the country manager of Chevron, which acquired three deepwater concessions last year, mostly in depths of 3,000m to 4,000m, says part of their appeal is that this area has not been explored before.
“But exploration is a risky business, and even in a success case, it will be a very long time before Morocco sees the kind of benefits associated with oil and gas production,” Atallah said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last