Somaliland Oil Exploration: Update thread

[Mahiigaan]

Aniguna waxaan dhowaan soo wada Shirikadda 'Kabacalaf'oo hore sahan ku samaysey aaga Qabriyada Bakaylaha guulna ka soo hooysey. Anigoo ah Dhanxiir, kuxigeenkayaga Mr. Geesxir iyo Eng. Dhako ayaa u ambabixidoonna Laland bishan aakhirkeeda. Saamiyadu waa idiin furanyihiine soo daadsha dee lacagta Xaajiyaal.

[N.O.R.F]

Back in business. Back in business!

 

By Goth Mohamed Goth

 

(SomalilandPress)The Somaliland government officials and representatives of the Oil Company Genel Energy today in a joint press conference announced the resume its operations in Somaliland.

 

A large delegation from Genel Energy led by the Company’s CEO, Tony Hayward, arrived in the country this morning in a bid to meet with the Somaliland Government officials headed by President Silanyo.

 

Genel Energy acquired significant acreage in Somaliland in 2012, investing in two large blocks in central Somaliland and assuming operatorship for both blocks.

 

The company committed to and implemented an extensive exploration work program and completed environmental impact assessments and aerial surveys. Preparation work for acquiring seismic data began in earnest and nearly 400km of lines were cleared to shoot 2-D Seismic when the company halted its operations in early September 2013 due to operational challenges, including some security concerns.

 

Throughout the halt in operations the Government of Somaliland and Genel Energy continued a constructive dialogue, culminating in the company’s return to Hargeisa.

 

In a statement the Minister of Energy and Minerals, Hon. Hussein Dualeh said:

 

“We are pleased to receive Mr Hayward and his Genel team back to Hargeisa. As this visit proves, Genel is committed to operating in Somaliland, it is here to stay and find oil for the benefit of the Somaliland people and its shareholders.”

 

The Somaliland government is committed to working closely with Genel Energy to help facilitate and the continued success of this important national project.

 

Somaliland is an island of peace in a difficult region. The government has worked hard to ensure security and protect the country’s borders.

 

“The Government has taken bold steps to protect and take full ownership to ensure the success of the exploration effort and we shall work with our partners we shall embark on a major public awareness and engagement with the community and to establish a security protective force to protect to ensure the safety of expatriates while executing their operation before any major operation begins.

 

On his part Tony Hayward who heads the Genel energy said, “I and my team come to Hargeisa today to reassure His Excellency President Ahmed Mohamed Mahmoud (Silanyo) and his ministers of our commitments to Somaliland, we have invest over 34 million dollars and we intend on continuing to pursue our work program here in Somaliland and with luck and good fortune we hope to find Gas and Oil for the benefits of each and every one in Somaliland.

 

“We have had very constructive and sustainable dialogue with the President and his ministerial team about how we can progress our work in Somaliland.

 

SomalilandPress.Com

[Baashi]

Investments and foreign investment in particular is always good to have invested in your neck of the wood. I would just caution that we put our magnifying glasses on and read the fine prints before we sign these deals. Tony Hayward is an old hand and he is alpha wolf in Oil industry. It pains me to see that the competency level of our side of the aisle is not up to par.

[Wiil Cusub]

Former BP Chief's New Quest: Wildcatting on the Edge of Danger

 

When London's Genel Energy GENL.LN +1.32% PLC decided last year to search for oil in Somalia, it didn't negotiate with the country's internationally recognized government in Mogadishu.

 

Instead, Genel Chief Executive Tony Hayward flew to a city about 500 miles north: Hargeisa, the dusty capital of breakaway Somaliland. He visited the separatist president at home and told the resources minister that Genel could spend about $100 million prospecting there.

 

"We will find oil," said Mr. Hayward at the July 2012 meeting, according to him and the resources minister, Hussein Abdi Dualeh. Somaliland gave Genel permission to prospect.

 

Mr. Hayward, BP BP.LN +0.29% PLC's chief during its 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, has joined a breed of wildcatters who deploy a risky and sometimes lucrative strategy: Look for oil in politically or geologically fraught lands after cutting deals with governments that claim the lands, even if those claims are in dispute.

 

These oilmen operate on what the 56-year-old Mr. Hayward calls "the political frontier." They sometimes defy the wishes of Washington and the United Nations, which say companies can amplify conflicts and foment instability by entering disputed lands.

 

 

Genel executives Tony Hayward and Mehmet Sepil hope to find oil in Somaliland. Bloomberg News

 

In Somaliland, Mr. Hayward is stepping into a decadeslong conflict. The northern-Somalia region declared independence in 1991. But Somalia still claims it, and the U.N. doesn't recognize its independence.

 

The breakaway Somaliland's oil agreements are particularly contentious because they sometimes overlap leases that the central Mogadishu government negotiated years ago and that are held by companies such as BP, Royal Dutch Shell RDSB.LN +0.07% PLC and ConocoPhillips. COP +1.51%

 

A U.S. State Department official says that without a resolution between the central and regional governments, oil deals "are going to create conflict." A July U.N. report says making oil deals in fractious Somali regions could "constitute threats to peace and security."

 

Somalia believes Genel's deal could "destabilize" the nation, the Mogadishu government told Mr. Hayward in a 2012 email The Wall Street Journal reviewed, alleging that Genel is "in search of more profits by creating more problems in this part of the world."

 

Mr. Hayward says he disagrees. Since BP replaced him in 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill, he has staked his future on the notion that finding oil will not only make money but also make people stop fighting.

 

"If people have the opportunity to earn money and buy a BMW, rather than run around the hills with a Kalashnikov," he says, "they'll do it."

Somaliland's Mr. Dualeh says oil will help win recognition and generate income for his stable but extremely poor region.

 

 

 

Workers drilled for oil at a Genel well in Iraq's Kurdistan region. Justin Scheck/The Wall Street Journal

 

Because small companies have less money, "by definition they have to go to the frontier, either the technical frontier or the political frontier," says Mr. Hayward. "There's no point in them following the big guys."

 

Mr. Hayward was drawn to Somaliland because it seemed a promising place to repeat Genel's success.

 

Genel was founded in 2002 by Mehmet Sepil, a Turkish construction magnate. He says current Iraqi president and longtime Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani phoned that year with a proposal: Develop Kurdistan's neglected oil fields.

 

"At the time, the political risk was very, very big," says Mr. Sepil, now Genel's president, from his Ankara office. (The Che Guevara portrait on his wall shows, he says, that he is an "old leftist.") The U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq, and relations between Turkey and the Kurds were "very sensitive."

 

Mr. Talabani, who suffered a stroke, couldn't be reached for comment.

 

Mr. Sepil and a partner agreed with Kurdistani leaders to spend at least $35 million prospecting, he says. Unable to hire a drilling contractor—none could get insurance—he spent $14 million for a used rig he trucked into the hills, he says. He eventually struck oil.

 

The Baghdad government told Mr. Sepil his Kurdistan leases weren't legitimate, he says. In 2004, he met Baghdad officials to negotiate approval, documents reviewed by the Journal show. They never reached a deal.

 

Baghdad adheres to its long-standing position, says an Iraqi Oil Ministry spokesman, that contracts signed in Kurdistan aren't valid if the central government hasn't approved them. He says Baghdad is open to negotiating with Kurdistan. A Kurdistani-government spokesman says its deals are legal.

 

Genel continued drilling despite the controversy.

 

 

 

 

At the dinner, Mr. Hayward, who dresses like a London banker, told the long-haired Mr. Sepil he wanted to move into politically or geographically risky Mediterranean and African regions. They agreed they could use Turkish and U.K. diplomatic contacts for access. "I said, 'Let's use our relationships like I used it in Kurdistan,' " Mr. Sepil says.

 

Mr. Hayward's firm acquired Genel in a deal that took it public in 2011. One technically challenging region they began exploring was off Morocco's coast, Mr. Hayward says.

 

Genel also consulted an in-house geologist with knowledge of Yemen's oil deposits. Such deposits, he told Genel, should also be present across the Gulf of Aden in Somaliland.

 

Somaliland fit the profile Mr. Hayward and Mr. Sepil sought: geologically promising, too risky for big companies and with diplomatic ties to their home countries.

 

Like Kurdistan a decade ago, Somaliland is self-governed and more stable than Somalia's south. The capital, Mr. Hayward says, "is very, very poor—as Kurdistan was when it all started in Erbil."

 

Turkey and the U.K. support Mogadishu but also support oil development in Somaliland, say diplomatic and oil-company officials. "We welcome inward investment into Somalia, including Somaliland," the U.K. foreign office says.

 

As in Kurdistan, oil seeps from the ground. Yet big oil companies aren't prospecting. Shell and others had leases in the 1980s to explore in Somalia, including parts of Somaliland, but suspended operations amid growing violence.

 

In the past decade, wildcatters began seeking local Somali leases. London's Ophir Energy OPHR.LN +0.51% PLC entered Somaliland in 2004 by acquiring an interest in a company that was granted a concession there in 2003—one that overlaps with a lease BP holds from Mogadishu.

 

Ophir says its lease is legitimate. Its partner, RAK Gas LLC of United Arab Emirates, in September acquired a controlling stake in the lease; RAK Gas didn't respond to inquiries. BP says its Somali leases are valid and that it is discussing them with Mogadishu.

 

Mogadishu says it considers leases by regional Somali governments invalid. The constitution "doesn't allow any federal states to enter any agreements, whether that's Somaliland or any other region," says Somalia's natural-resources minister, Abdirizak Omar Mohamed.

 

In July 2012, Genel chartered a plane to Hargeisa. Somaliland's Mr. Dualeh says he was thrilled to see Mr. Hayward—whom he knew from TV newscasts—arrive at his ministry building.

 

After Somaliland announced the Genel deal, Mogadishu objected: "There is no 'Independent Republic of Somaliland,' " federal oil adviser Patrick Molliere wrote in an email to Mr. Hayward, reviewed by the Journal. "You were the BP CEO, and you know that you cannot sign with a local federal government."

 

Mr. Hayward says he was unfazed: "It's not dissimilar to the experience in the Kurdistan region of Iraq." Genel says it believes the regional government has jurisdiction.

 

Genel's block overlaps with a ConocoPhillips lease from Mogadishu. ConocoPhillips isn't exploring in Somalia, but "we have not relinquished our interests there," a company spokesman says.

 

Mogadishu has decried other such deals. "Companies like yours are creating potential possible instabilities," Mr. Molliere wrote in May to Chairman Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani of Norway's DNO International AS DNO.OS +4.12% A, which has an exploration agreement with Somaliland. Mr. Mossavar-Rahmani says the lease is valid.

 

Lane Franks, president of Phoenix-based Liberty Petroleum Corp., formed a company that agreed last year with Somalia's Galmudug state to explore an area there that Mogadishu had awarded to Shell.

 

He negotiated with Galmudug President Abdi Hassan Awale, he says. The U.N.'s July report called Mr. Awale a "warlord" who fought U.N. peacekeepers in the 1990s. Mr. Franks says he is aware of Mr. Awale's history but believes he has changed. He "seemed to be a man who really wanted what was best for his people," he says.

 

Mr. Awale, by phone, said: "I don't know what you mean about, with the 'warlord.' " He declined to comment further, requesting contact by text message; he didn't answer subsequent texts.

 

Mogadishu and Shell officials say they objected to the leases. Somalia's supreme court approved Galmudug's right to sign leases, says a Mogadishu official, adding that the central government expects to appeal.

 

Shell CEO Peter Voser says Shell is discussing returning to Somali offshore sites. At a March meeting in the Netherlands, Shell officials told Mogadishu officials they "should take responsibility and action" on leases that overlap Shell's, according to documents the Journal reviewed. Shell and Mogadishu officials confirm the meeting.

 

Genel teams this year began seismic tests in Somaliland. They pulled out this September after a security threat. "Discussions continue with the Somaliland government in order to facilitate a resumption of activity," Genel said last month.

 

Somaliland's Mr. Dualeh says it may create an armed "oil protection force."

[Wiil Cusub]

Source The wall street journal

 

[Che -Guevara]

Oodweyne. Nagadaa bootada bal how many shares do you have in Genel?

[Hawdian]

Thanks for posting that article Wiil Cusub.

 

One things for sure. In republic of somaliland Not many companies have searching for oil so its still to early to say . But one thing for sure the country is in the oil belt. I have noted the pressure the Somaliland gov and the Company have being under by a Particular foreign country , for this investment to fall.

As long as our Gov tries it best to attract Foreign investment then it should be okay in end. Everything is Qadar.

[Burn Notice]

Oodweyne;987117 wrote:

Wiil Cusub (New Boy),

 

Thanks for this post, it really is deeply revealing about the extend others would go to stop Somaliland's reaching her goal of producing her God-given wealth to benefit her citizens. Furthermore, like the tenous realationship between Kurdistan and Baghdad, we will continue to hear all maner of daily scream and endless bluster from Mugadishu's governmental outfit, but so long as we control our land by our force, then, we will continue to develop our oil, regardless.

 

And, of course, to have some one like Mr Tony Hayward, who is not afraid of some tin-pot little government that is on life-support, such as the one that screams daily for attention from Mogadishu, also helps tremendously in here.

 

All in all, I say drill away, baby, and when we find the "black-gold", then we will settle acount with all comers, particularly with the "big-powers" in the West, who wouldn't want, presumably, to leave Somaliland's oil in that eventual time, to the likes of the Chinese of this world.

Lmao...will we also hear how oil exploration is a curse like you raved on about when Puntland drilled for oil?

 

...and then you wonder why no one takes you seriously

 

Good luck finding oil ...doubt you will have any success but as always time will tell

[Burn Notice]

Oodweyne;987117 wrote:

Wiil Cusub (New Boy),

 

Thanks for this post, it really is deeply revealing about the extend others would go to stop Somaliland's reaching her goal of producing her God-given wealth to benefit her citizens. Furthermore, like the tenous realationship between Kurdistan and Baghdad, we will continue to hear all maner of daily scream and endless bluster from Mugadishu's governmental outfit, but so long as we control our land by our force, then, we will continue to develop our oil, regardless.

 

And, of course, to have some one like Mr Tony Hayward, who is not afraid of some tin-pot little government that is on life-support, such as the one that screams daily for attention from Mogadishu, also helps tremendously in here.

 

All in all, I say drill away, baby, and when we find the "black-gold", then we will settle acount with all comers, particularly with the "big-powers" in the West, who wouldn't want, presumably, to leave Somaliland's oil in that eventual time, to the likes of the Chinese of this world.

Lmao...will we also hear how oil exploration is a curse like you raved on about when Puntland drilled for oil?

 

...and then you wonder why no one takes you seriously

 

Good luck finding oil ...doubt you will have any success but as always time will tell

[Hawdian]

^ is there oil in HOA yes how much nobody knows until the oil companies start searching for it. If we compare Horn africa region with Ohio state in the USA we can see that in Ohio state (small state like somali ) they have drilled 220,000 oil wells compare to HOA where it's less than 100. What this company is doing is a start like it did in Kurdistan if its succesfull more will follow. So no reason to jump to conclusion but positive news in the end .

[Wiil Cusub]

Genel Energy To Spend $500M Exploring In Five Countries

 

by Reuters|Friday, November 22, 2013

 

 

ISTANBUL, Nov 22 (Reuters) - London-listed oil firm Genel Energy is planning to invest $500 million for exploration activities in Ethiopia, Somaliland, Ivory Coast, Malta and Morocco in the next two years, the company's president said told Reuters on Friday.

 

"We will spend $250 million of this in 2014," Mehmet Sepil said on the sidelines of Atlantic Summit in Istanbul, adding that the company currently has around a cash balance of $900 million, which will cover this investment budget.

 

- See more at: http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/130271/Genel_Energy_To_Spend_500M_Exploring_In_Five_Countries#sthash.7exZR3pc.dpuf

[Che -Guevara]

lol@Burn Notice Are you saying the oil exploration in Sland is a scam like many senior landers on SOL alleged about Puntland:p

 

 

Oodweyne Don't spend it all unless we are talking about Kaleeji oil type.

[Wiil Cusub]

Che and burn: different between sl and pl oil exploration is. PL they make already conclusion and they ware talking about billions of barrels, before they make any Seismic data collection. Without seismic operation 2D or 3D how can you talk about nr of barrels.

In Somaliland they are talking about exploration and they never said we found oil just watch 1 min this video

 

 

[burahadeer]

it's important somaliland drilled first as is the only entity where all somalis r welcome.

[Burn Notice]

Che -Guevara;987194 wrote:

lol@Burn Notice Are you saying the oil exploration in Sland is a scam like many senior landers on SOL alleged about Puntland:p

 

 

Oodweyne Don't spend it all unless we are talking about Kaleeji oil type.

Not saying that at all...just saying how hypocritical some posters are and how their opinions change 180 deg when it's their blocks that are being drilled by foreign companies

 

Very amusing...go read the BS being posted during the Puntland drilling campaign ...people were screaming blue murder

 

Suddenly oil exploration is going to be the panacea for all of SL's ills

 

Do your homework...the oil is in the Nugaal block so who ever drills there will be the big winner

 

Good luck to Genel..the more companies drilling the merrier