TotalEnergies is looking to discuss the potential signing of an exploration contract offshore Syria with officials in Damascus, the French supermajor’s chief executive, Patrick Pouyanné, said during a visit to the Middle Eastern country.
“Syria’s offshore area has never really been explored historically, so we have partnered with other companies to look into it. We will discuss it today with our Syrian counterparts to see whether we can move towards a contract,” Pouyanné told reporters, as carried by RFI.
In May this year, TotalEnergies, together with its partners QatarEnergy and ConocoPhillips, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Syrian Petroleum Company (SPC) relating to the exploration of Block 3, offshore Syria in the Mediterranean Sea.
The MoU, a preliminary agreement, covers a technical review by the partners of the offshore Block 3 area and establishes a framework for technical and commercial discussions related to exploration activities on this block.
TotalEnergies now seeks to turn the MoU into a contract after discussions with officials.
While offshore exploration in Syria is back on the table for the supermajor, onshore oil and gas activities remain a higher-risk endeavor and not a viable exploration option for TotalEnergies now, Pouyanné said.
Early this year, days before the Iran war started, the chief executive of the state-owned Syrian Petroleum Company said that Syria expects to award oil and gas exploration licenses to major international oil firms as it looks to tap its estimated huge reserves.
“There is a lot of land in the country that has not been touched yet. There are trillions of cubic metres of gas,” Youssef Qablawi, CEO of Syrian Petroleum Company, told the Financial Times in remarks in early February.
Syria is tapping U.S. firms Chevron and ConocoPhillips and European majors TotalEnergies and Eni to help it drill for oil and gas and revive the country’s hydrocarbon industry following more than a decade of civil war, Qablawi said.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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