Tunisia Upstream: Strikes Over, Decline Continues, Hope Delayed To 2019
08 Jun, 2018
Corporate
Tunisia: Petrofac Quits, DNO Cuts Its Losses
06 Jul 2018
IOCs continue to quit the country on the back of chronic instability.
Petrofac, one of the key upstream operators in Tunisia on 28 June announced the sale of its 45% operator’s stake in Tunisia’s Chergui gas field to privately owned French firm Perenco. Tunisian state firm ETAP has the remaining 55%.
Output at Chergui on Kerkennah island near Sfax has been highly erratic in recent years. It rebounded to 25mn cfd for Jan-April 2018 (MEES, 8 June), not far off 30mn cfd capacity. But this proved too little too late for Petrofac, given a series of strikes that shut in output for much of the preceding two years. Petrofac previously informed the Tunisian authorities of its decision to quit the country in September 2016 before being talked out of it at the last moment (MEES, 23 September 2016).
“The sale marks another milestone in [Petrofac’s] strategy to transition back to a capital-light...