Egypt to hold tender for energy drilling in the Mediterranean Sea

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Egypt will hold a tender for energy drilling in the Mediterranean Sea, Egyptian Minister of Investment Osama Saleh said yesterday.

Saleh said they would invite leading international companies by the end of the year or at the beginning of next year to hold a tender for energy exploration and drilling in the Mediterranean Sea.

“The explorations by the Greek Cypriot administration entered into the continental shelf of Egypt, which is a subject of international law and agreements,” Saleh said.

Saleh said Egypt had laws that protected investors, adding that there was no situation that would affect investors negatively in Egypt. “There is no need to give investors in Egypt assurances. I’ve talked to investors in Egypt, and they are satisfied with the situation and have plans to do more business and expand their existing businesses. Egypt is a state with laws and institutions to protect investors.”

The investment system in Egypt is different, Saleh said. “Turkish investors prefer to build export-oriented factories in free trade zones because they are exempt from taxes.”

Egypt has bilateral agreements with Arab, African, European and American countries. “Therefore we present our investors a market with a population of 1.5 billion. The products exported from Egypt to these countries are not subject to customs and extra taxes.”

Saleh said a lot of Turkish factories had moved to Egypt because of qualified and cheap workers. “Among our targets are construction and contracting companies,” he added.

Turkey Beating Norway as Biggest Regional Oil Driller: Energy

Offshore Oil drilling on Turkey's Black sea cost

Selcan Hacaloğlu & Brian Swint       Bloomberg


Turkey is drilling for oil and natural gas with more rigs than any European country and plans new rules in 2013 to speed exploration of energy supplies for the fastest-growing major economy after China.

The country fielded 26 rigs at Dec. 31, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, and the number has since risen to 34, Energy Ministry officials said yesterday. Turkey has leapfrogged Norway as offshore drilling increased in the Black and Mediterranean seas. Spending on exploration jumped to $610 million last year from $42 million a decade earlier.

With economic growth forecast at 3.5 percent this year and about twice the pace of the most advanced economies to 2017, Turkey is drilling for its own energy to ease reliance on imports from Iran, Iraq and Russia. State-owned Turkish Petroleum Corp. has taken Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) and Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) as partners, after neighboring Israel and Cyprus made some of the decade’s biggest gas finds in the past three years.

“If there’s one country that needs energy, it’s Turkey,” said Darren Engels, an analyst at FirstEnergy Capital in Calgary. “Their domestic business doesn’t scratch the surface.”

Turkish Petroleum, which is known as TPAO and has operations in Libya, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Colombia and Kazakhstan, needs to boost domestic output as it pursues a target of supplying all of Turkey’s energy needs by 2023.