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.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
FACTORY SHIFT: While Taiwan produces most of the world’s AI servers, firms are under pressure to move manufacturing amid geopolitical tensions Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) started building artificial intelligence (AI) servers in India’s south, the latest boon for the rapidly growing country’s push to become a high-tech powerhouse. The company yesterday said it has started making the large, powerful computers in Pondicherry, southeastern India, moving beyond products such as laptops and smartphones. The Chinese company would also build out its facilities in the Bangalore region, including a research lab with a focus on AI. Lenovo’s plans mark another win for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who tries to attract more technology investment into the country. While India’s tense relationship with China has suffered setbacks
RSS