Delek makes bid for exploration license south of Cyprus
If the consortium were to win the tender, Capricorn would own a 50 percent stake in the license, while the other half would be split equally between Delek Drilling and Avner with a 25% stake each.
By MICHELLE MALKA GROSSMANIsrael Navy missile ship patrols near Tamar gas field(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Delek Group is looking to have a greater stake outside of Israeli waters after it submitted its second bid in one week for stakes in foreign oil and gas fields.The company announced on Sunday that its subsidiaries Delek Drilling and Avner Oil & Gas officially submitted a bid to the Cypriot government as part of a consortium with Capricorn Oil Limited, a subsidiary of Scotland-based Cairn Energy, for an exploratory drilling license.It would allow exploration in Blocks six, eight, and 10 of Cyprus’s waters, off the country’s southern coast and west of Haifa and Beirut. The company said in a statement that it would also be a way to “strengthen its regional operations” and “build agreements...with international players with existing operation in the Mediterranean.”If the consortium were to win the tender, Capricorn would own a 50 percent stake in the license, while the other half would be split equally between Delek Drilling and Avner with a 25% stake each.The winner of the tender is expected to be announced at some point in the first quarter of 2017.It would not mark Delek’s first foray into Cypriot waters. Delek Drilling and Avner each had exploratory licenses along with Noble Energy in Block 10, which lead to the discovery of the 129 billion-cubic-meter Aphrodite reservoir, of which Delek Group’s subsidiaries own a combined 30% share.On Monday, Delek Group announced that they were in talks with UK independent oil producer EnQuest to buy a 20% share in the Kraken oil field, off the coast of Scotland, for $612 million.Cairn Energy owns 29.5% of this field.At the moment, the Delek Drilling and Avner have shares in all of Israel’s known off-shore natural gas fields. In the Tamar reservoir, the subsidiaries own a combined 31.25% stake and a combined 25.34% stake in Leviathan reservoir. They also own the Karish and Tanin reservoirs, but are in the process of selling it off.