Rumailah: deal closed for oilfield with BP and CNPC while bids for other Iraqi oilfields are in limbo.
Pertamina may forgo West Qurna
A consortium in which Pertamina was a member has withdrawn its bid for the West Qurna oil block in Iraq as the terms offered on the development were not sufficiently attractive, a company executive said yesterday.
"We have withdrawn (the bid) as the terms would have made (the project) uneconomical for us," Dwi Martono, director of international business at Pertamina Hule Energi, the state firm's upstream unit, told Dow Jones Newswires.
Martono didn't elaborate further. However, the Iraqi government has reportedly set a cap of $2 per barrel on the bonus payments for crude output above minimum production targets.
Bidding for West Qurna and several other blocks had not been completed when the government adjourned the bidding process on Tuesday.
The government gave companies a chance to resubmit bids on Tuesday evening.
Pertamina had planned to jointly bid for the West Qurna with Malaysia's Petronas and China National Petroleum Corporation The block is believed to hold 8.6 billion barrels of oil with a target output of 600,000 barrels per day, and currently produces about 280,000 bpd, according to local media reports.