Official announcement: Oil week on Snet

[Talo alle udaa]

The Ogaden Basin is an area of Ogadkenya that may hold significant reserves of crude oil and natural gas.[1] The basin covers an area of some 350,000 square kilometres (135,000 square miles) and is formed from sedimentary rocks up to 10,000 meters (6 miles) thick.[2] It has geological similarities to other hydrocarbon-rich basins in the Middle East.[3]



[edit] Hydrocarbon exploration and development (Ogadkenya)
Exploration blocks in the Ogaden Basin and Kismayo CoastThe first exploration in the basin was undertaken by Standard Oil in 1920[2] More recent exploration by Tenneco resulted in the discovery of an estimated 68 million cubic metres (2.4 billion cubic feet) of gas in 1974.[2] Development of the reserves in the basin's Calub and Hilala gas fields is being carried out by the Gazoil Ethiopia Project, a joint-venture partnership between the government of Ethiopia and Texas-based Sicor announced in December 1999.[1][2]

The basin has been divided into 21 blocks,[4] and exploration rights have been awarded for many of them. Companies with concessions in the basin include Netherlands registered Pexco Exploration, Petronas (Malaysia), Lundin East Africa (Sweden), South West Energy (Hong Kong), and Afar Explorer (USA).[3]

[edit] Political instability and armed conflictThe Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia took place for the control of the region between 1977 and 1978, with a further clash in 1988. In recent years the armed wing of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) have been active, and have stated that they will not allow the resources of the region to be exploited, urging international oil companies not to sign agreements with the Ethiopian government.[5]

On April 24, 2007, members of the ONLF attacked and destroyed an oil exploration facility within the basin near Obala and Abole, killing approximately 65 Ethiopians and 9 Chinese nationals in the Abole raid.[6] The facility was being operated by the Chinese Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, a subsidiary of Sinopec,[7] on behalf of Petronas.[8][9]

If Meles profits from this wealth...Ethiopian humiliation of the Somali will continue well into the 23rd century. This wealth should be split half and half.

[Monk-of-Mogadishu]

I think every non-oil topic should be deleted, its a waste of precious oil space.

[Talo alle udaa]

July 23, 2011 - The Ministry of Mines yesterday awarded the Calub and Hilala natural gas fields and eight exploration blocks found in the Ogaden basin to a Chinese oil and gas company, PetroTrans Company, according to the Ethiopian Reporter.

Sikinesh Ejigu, minister of Mines and chairman of PetroTrans, Mr. John Chin, signed a petroleum development agreement and four exploration and production sharing agreements at the Sheraton Addis. The petroleum development agreement will enable PetroTrans to develop the natural gas reserves in the Calub and Hilala localities found in the Somali Regional State.

The gas fields, which have an estimated reserve of four TCF (trillion cubic feet), are found 1200 km south east of Addis Ababa.

The gas fields as well as all the exploration blocks were previously held by the Malaysian oil and gas giant Petronas. The ministry floated all Petronas’s concessions in Ethiopia except the Gambella block, found in west Ethiopia near the Sudanese border. An independent petroleum expert told The Reporter that all the blocks held by Petronas are promising for oil and gas discovery.

PetroTrans Company Ltd. Was established in 1997. Founded by Mr. John Chin, it has been mainly involved in the Upstream Oil & Gas Industry, as well as Oil & Gas financing and leasing.

Following the withdrawal of Petronas from Ethiopia, the Ministry of Mines last March invited seven companies to bid for Calub and Hilala gas fields and the eight exploration blocks deemed promising for oil and gas discovery. The total area of the exploration blocks is 93,000 sq.km while the Calub and Hilala gasfileds cover 283 sq.km.

The seven local and international oil companies shortlisted by the ministry bought the bid document and four of them submitted their technical and financial proposals to the ministry. The companies that returned the bid documents were PetroTrans, South West Energy Ltd, an Ethiopian oil and gas company, Cobramar of Seychelles and National Oil Company (NOC), a local petroleum which has a chain of fuel stations across the nation. NOC was established by the Ethiopian-born Saudi billionaire, Sheik Mohammed Hussien Ali Alamoudi.

The ministry said the best proposals were submitted by PetroTrans. According to the ministry, the company will pay the Ethiopian government an upfront payment of USD 130 million and will invest up to four billion dollars on the gas development project. “When you compare the proposals of PetroTrans with the proposals offered by the other companies it is incomparable. PetroTrans’s proposal by far exceeds that of the others,” Sinkenesh said at the signing ceremony.

John Chin said that his company is committed to develop the proven gas reserves and discover new oil and gas reserves. “We have discovered oil in Sudan, Chad and Nigeria. We want to do the same here,” he told The Reporter. He said ten years ago his company built a 600-km oil pipeline from Port Sudan to Khartoum in less than ten months. “Two years ago we built 8300 kms of pipeline in China in less than two years. Once we get into a commitment we are very serious and we do it quickly,” He said. The company hopes to finalise the project within 30 months. “A study has to be undertaken to determine where to build the gas treatment plant. We also have to conduct a survey to identify the route of the pipeline,” Chin said.

PetroTrans has been working with two renowned Chinese oil companies - SinoPec International and CNPC. The gas pipeline construction work will be given to either of the two, a company executive told The Reporter.

PetroTrans will pay to the government 35 percent income tax and a five percent royalty fee. The Ethiopian government will have a five percent stake in the project.

Source: Reporter

These oil files I hear are not far from C/waaq. The Ethiopians have currentl stationed themselves in Central Somalia to presumably protect these Oil fileds so close to C/waaq from Anti-Ethiopian elements.

[Talo alle udaa]

Look at this 15 year old news article. It states the head of U.S. operations inside mogadishu during the 1993 "humanitarian" mission was a subsidiary of Conoc philips, an Oil giant in the U.S. It states the U.S. wanted to "cash" in on the peace that was to be expected from the "U.N. peace" mission. Apparently the Siad barre regime gave concessions to U.S. Oil firms giving them exploration rights in return of probabily large sums of money.

Invasion of Somalia a boon for big oil
Wednesday, January 27, 1993 - 11:00
By Norm Dixon


Four giant US oil companies stand to make a killing in Somalia if US troops can pacify the strategic African nation, the Los Angeles Times has revealed. The report further undermines US claims that the invasion was a "humanitarian mission" rather than one to defend US military and economic interests in the region.


The report, which appeared on January 18, revealed that almost two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips by the pro-US dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. Barre was overthrown in January 1991.

It seems a significant motive behind the decision of US President George Bush, a former Texas oil magnate, to send troops to Somalia may have been protecting the oil industry's multimillion-dollar investments there.

The LA Times revealed that Conoco, the only major multinational corporation to maintain a functioning office in Mogadishu since 1991, allowed its Mogadishu corporate compound to be transformed into the de facto US embassy before US Marines landed in the capital. The president of the company's subsidiary in Somalia served as the US government's volunteer "facilitator" before and during the intervention.

"They sent all the wrong signals when [US special envoy Robert] Oakley moved into the Conoco compound", an expert on Somalia who worked with one of the four companies in the late 1980s told the LA Times.


"It's left everyone thinking the big question here isn't famine relief but oil — whether the oil concessions granted under Siad Barre will be transferred if and when peace is restored. It's potentially worth billions of dollars, and believe me, that's what the whole game is starting to look like."

According to Thomas O'Connor, principal petroleum engineer for the World Bank, who headed a three-year study of the oil prospects in the Gulf of Aden, off Somalia's northern coast, Somalia's oilfields have "high [commercial] potential ... once the Somalis get their act together".

In 1991 a World Bank-coordinated study, geologists put Somalia and Sudan at the top of the list of eight prospective commercial oil producers.

In 1986, Conoco, Amoco, Chevron, Phillips and, briefly, Shell obtained exploration licences for northern Somalia from Siad Barre's government. Somalia was carved up into concessions, with Conoco, Amoco and Chevron winning the right to explore and exploit the most promising ones.

The companies' interest in Somalia was sparked by the mid-'80s discovery of an estimated 1 billion barrels of oil across the Gulf of Aden in Yemen. Geologists believe those reserves are part of a great field that extends into and across northern Somalia.

The Yemeni operation now yields nearly 200,000 barrels of oil a day. Then vice president George Bush was on hand to officially open the Texas-based Hunt Oil Corporation's refinery in Yemen in April 1986. In his speech, which concluded a 10-day Middle East tour, Bush stressed "the growing strategic importance to the West of developing crude oil sources in the region away from the Strait of Hormuz". The Strait of Hormuz controls access to the Persian Gulf and its vast oil reserves.

United Press International reported soon after: "Throughout the course of his 17,000-mile trip, Bush suggested continued low [oil] prices would jeopardise a domestic oil industry 'vital to the national security interests of the United States', which was interpreted at home and abroad as a sign the one-time oil driller from Texas was coming to the aid of his former associates".

Since the US invasion of Somalia on December 9 little has been said in public about Somalia's potential for oil and natural gas production.

[eliteSomali]

The Ogaden Basin is an area of Ogadkenya that may hold significant reserves of crude oil and natural gas.[1] The basin covers an area of some 350,000 square kilometres (135,000 square miles) and is formed from sedimentary rocks up to 10,000 meters (6 miles) thick.[2] It has geological similarities to other hydrocarbon-rich basins in the Middle East.[3]



[edit] Hydrocarbon exploration and development (Ogadkenya)
Exploration blocks in the Ogaden Basin and Kismayo CoastThe first exploration in the basin was undertaken by Standard Oil in 1920[2] More recent exploration by Tenneco resulted in the discovery of an estimated 68 million cubic metres (2.4 billion cubic feet) of gas in 1974.[2] Development of the reserves in the basin's Calub and Hilala gas fields is being carried out by the Gazoil Ethiopia Project, a joint-venture partnership between the government of Ethiopia and Texas-based Sicor announced in December 1999.[1][2]

The basin has been divided into 21 blocks,[4] and exploration rights have been awarded for many of them. Companies with concessions in the basin include Netherlands registered Pexco Exploration, Petronas (Malaysia), Lundin East Africa (Sweden), South West Energy (Hong Kong), and Afar Explorer (USA).[3]

[edit] Political instability and armed conflictThe Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia took place for the control of the region between 1977 and 1978, with a further clash in 1988. In recent years the armed wing of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) have been active, and have stated that they will not allow the resources of the region to be exploited, urging international oil companies not to sign agreements with the Ethiopian government.[5]

On April 24, 2007, members of the ONLF attacked and destroyed an oil exploration facility within the basin near Obala and Abole, killing approximately 65 Ethiopians and 9 Chinese nationals in the Abole raid.[6] The facility was being operated by the Chinese Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, a subsidiary of Sinopec,[7] on behalf of Petronas.[8][9]

If Meles profits from this wealth...Ethiopian humiliation of the Somali will continue well into the 23rd century. This wealth should be split half and half.

Who the F wrote this shyt? Ogadkenya kuyeh.

[Talo alle udaa]

I think every non-oil topic should be deleted, its a waste of precious oil space.

Indeed, the font color should be changed to black as well

[DANGIRL]

The Ogaden Basin is safeguarded by the ONLF. That discolored freak will never profit from it.

[Monk-of-Mogadishu]

Dangirl, shut the fuck up please.