BP Hopes to Start Libya Drilling in 2010

The British oil and gas company British Petroleum (BP) is in the final stages of its seismic underground investigations in the huge Sirte basin west of the city of Bengazi in north Libya. "We are coming to the end of the offshore seismic work, and then there is more ongoing seismic work on shore," Robert Wine, a spokesperson for BP, announced. "We will then analyze the seismic [result] and work out the prospects for the first well to be drilled, that will be sometime in 2010," Wine said. "The agreement we signed back in 2007 was an exploration commitment of US$900 million, although we said at the time that it would probably be slightly more around US$1.2 billion," he said. While oil drilling can have some unforeseeable factors, Wine expressed hope that the endeavourer would be profitable for the company. "With the best seismic readings in the world, you never know until you drill a well and see what's actually down there. If the acreages we get is as good as we hope then in the long term we could be looking at an investment on the scale of US$20 billion dollars over a decade or two," Wine said. When the deal was signed, BP's group chief executive Tony Hayward described it as "BP's single biggest exploration commitment" and it marked a return of the company to the country after a 30-year absence. BP in addition committed to spend US$50 million on education and training projects for Libyan professionals during the exploration and appraisal period and upon success a further US$50 million from commencement of production. While there are some 40 other oil and gas companies active in the Libya at the moment, including Italian Eni SpA and American giant Exxon Mobil Corporation, the BP deal is considered by some to be the most controversial. In August 2009, the Scottish government released the terminally ill Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer who was serving a life sentence for his involvement in the Pan American flight 103 bombing, over Scotland's Lockerbie in 1988 that killed 271 people. The decision to release Al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds was based on a diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer in which he'd been given less than 3 months to live. Following the release, British Justice Secretary Jack Straw told his Scottish counterpart that the decision to release Al-Megrahi was made in order to facilitate "wider negotiations" and the "overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom". - Zawya