ONGC loses bid for Iraqi oilfield

Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) today lost a bid to acquire a large oilfield in Iraq to a consortium of Chinese, Malaysian and French energy firms.

ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas investment arm of the state-run explorer, teamed with Oil India Ltd (OIL) and Turkish Petroleum Corp (TPAO) in its bid for the Halfaya oilfield in Iraq's second post-war bid round today.

It was, however, outsmarted by a bid from China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), Petronas Cargali Sdn Bhd of Malaysia and France's Total SA, sources said. CNPC-Malaysia-Total offered to boost production from Halfaya to 535,000 barrels per day at a cost of $1.40 per barrel.

The OVL-led consortium had offered to boost output to 550,000 bpd but at a higher cost of $1.76 a barrel.

Turkish Petroleum had a 50 per cent interest in the consortium, while OVL held 30 per cent. OIL had the remaining 20 per cent.

Baghdad has put 10 groups of fields on offer in the second tender. Halfaya field has 4.60 billion barrels of reserves with a projected 13-year peak output of a minimum 400,000 barrels per day (20 million tonnes a year).

The Indians also faced competition from Norway's Statoil ASA and Russian OAO Lukoil consortium which bid $1.53 per barrel to boost output to 600,000 bpd.

Also in the fray was a joint venture of Eni of Italy, Sononal of Angola, Cnooc of China, Korea Gas and Occidental of the US, which wanted to be paid $12.9 per barrel for producing 400,000 bpd of peak output from Halfaya oilfield.

OVL had in the first round in June lost the Zubair oil field when it along with OAO Gazprom of Russia and TPAO had asked for remuneration several times higher than $1.90-2 a barrel that Baghdad was willing to pay.

Iraq sought bids from 45 pre-qualified oil firms on the dollar-per-barrel remuneration fee they want for developing the fields and the targeted plateau production.

While the first post-war Iraqi licencing round in June was focused on increasing output from huge oilfields already in production, the second is about bringing on stream massive undeveloped fields such as Majnoon and West Qurna Phase II.

As in the first licensing round, all contracts will be technical service contracts, rather than the production sharing contracts favoured by the interested international oil firms.

Baghdad is looking at signing a 20-year TSCs for the fields, sources said. Sources said the scoring formula for the two bidding parameters, the dollar-per-barrel remuneration fee and plateau production target, has been weighted 80 per cent toward the fee, with the aim of dissuading companies from promising unrealistically high output targets.