EXXON veut en retirer 2 milliards de dollars. Il va investir en offshore au Guyana, et dans les oil shale '' à la maison''.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/U ... ntury.htmlU.S. Oil Majors To Break “The Contract Of The Century”
By Tsvetana Paraskova - Dec 05, 2018
Since the oil industry started to recover from the 2014 price crash, U.S. supermajors ExxonMobil and Chevron have been re-aligning their global operations with their longer-term priorities, betting more on the shale patch at home and on several strategic projects worldwide.
The companies are now looking to exit Azerbaijan, including the country’s biggest oil field and some pipeline infrastructure. This would mark the withdrawal of U.S. companies from the Azeri oil industry a full 25 years after western majors, including five U.S. firms, signed what is known as “the Contract of the Century” in the former Soviet republic.
As part of a re-prioritization of its global operations, ExxonMobil is looking to sell its minority stake in the giant Azeri oil field Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) in the Caspian Sea, hoping to obtain as much as US$2 billion for its interest, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing banking and industry sources.
Chevron, for its part, is reviewing its global asset portfolio and has “decided to initiate the process of marketing, with a view to a potential sale, of our Chevron affiliate interests in the Azeri Chirag and Deep Water Gunashli (ACG) project and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline,” the company said in a statement to Reuters.
Chevron has an 8.9 percent stake in the BTC pipeline, which carries oil from the ACG field and condensate from Shah Deniz across Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey.
Chevron also owns a 9.6-percent stake in the ACG oil field, and is currently the third-largest shareholder behind field operator BP and Azeri state firm SOCAR. Exxon holds 6.8 percent in the field, while the other foreign partners in the venture include the operator BP, INPEX, Equinor, TP, ITOCHU, and ONGC Videsh.
Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli was Azerbaijan’s first offshore oil Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) contract with Western majors, and was hailed as “the Contract of the Century”. The country and a consortium of foreign oil companies signed a 30-year deal in 1994 to develop the field. Exxon was part of the initial group of companies that signed the contract with Azerbaijan, which also featured four other U.S. companies at the time— Amoco, Unocal, Pennzoil, and McDermott. Last year, the deal was extended to 2050.
Production at the giant Azeri field averaged 596,000 bpd in the first half of 2018, accounting for around 75 percent of Azerbaijan’s total oil production.
The field has received U.S. support, and U.S. companies have been involved in its development as it was seen as a giant resource that could undermine Russia’s dominance in European energy supply. But the promise of possible new finds near the giant field never materialized, and Azerbaijan tightened its grip on energy assets via SOCAR.
Approached by Reuters, Exxon spokeswoman Julie King declined to comment on the company’s plans for Azerbaijan, just saying that “we don’t comment on market rumors or speculation.”