The newspaper did not mention the rest of the awards for Blocks 2 through 6 expected this week in the second round of the licensing process, and no other major Nigerian newspaper, nor the principal Sao Tome online news site Tela Non (www.cstome.net), gave any hint of when they might occur.
ERHC is reportedly favored to win one or more operatorsships with Devon Energy and Pioneer Natural Resources, its partners in bids for Blocks 2 and 3, and or Noble Drilling, its partner in a Block 4 bid. Reportedly, an email from UpstreamOnline reporter Barry Morgan circulated last night on a closed investor site stating that ERHC had "swept" Blocks 2, 3 and 4. There was no way to verify either the alleged email or its author.
ERHC has existing preferential rights in all five of the blocks, ranging from 15 percent of Block 6 to 30 percent of Block 1. ExxonMobil has two 25 percent preferential entitlements in Blocks 2 and 4 which it has chosen not to exercise and may have "farmed out" to the Nigerian National Petroleum subsidiary, NPDC.
The signing yesterday in Sao Tome also finally opened the long-jammed floodgates of oil money for the island nation of 140,000 people, bringing them a check for $49 million - more than 10 times the value of their next-largest source of revenue, the cocoa expot trade.
Veteran oil write Bassey Udo reported in This Day:
JDZ oil exploration begins August
By Bassey Udo
Energy Editor, Lagos
Optimism is high that ChevronTexaco and its joint venture (JV) partners – ExxonMobil and Dangote Energy Equity Resources (DEER) – will begin oil exploration in the Nigeria-Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Zone (JDZ) in August.
The Production Sharing Contract (PSC) was signed on Tuesday spelling out the details of the involvement of all parties to the premier oil concession, and it was learnt on Wednesday that the next thing is the payment of the $123 million signature bonus.
“The contract should take legal effect as soon as all outstanding conditions, including the payment of the signature bonus, have been met. This will pave the way for oil exploration activities to start soon, but not later than August,” a source close to one of the companies said.
Each member of the consortium is expected to pay a signature bonus in the ratio of it equity holding.
ChevronTexaco will pay 51 percent of the $123 million, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria-São Tomé "One", a subsidiary of ExxonMobil (40 percent) and DEER, a JV between the Dangote Group and Energy Equity Resources of Norway (nine percent).
Every cent of the income must be documented under a new law enacted just a month prior to the signing by Sao Tome's Parliament, and expenditures from the oil fund must be reported promptly to the world. That law was hailed by the United Nations and World Bank, among others, as a model piece of "transparency" legislation that will help both Nigeria and Sao Tome fight the corruption long associated with black gold.
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