The US giant will be able to issue a tender for the project's front-end engineering and design once upstream regulator BP Migas approves the development plan. This is likely to take a minimum of three months, said sources.

Chevron inherited the Gendalo-Gehem assets when it acquired Unocal and immediately placed them on the backburner to review Unocal's work.

The Gendalo complex has reserves of between 2 trillion and 3.4