Global Upstream Scouting | Middle East North Africa | Another Syria Bid Round, Looking Into Shell’s Velox, Ratio Counting on Egypt Assets, Capricorn's Endgame

In fact, not to give anything away, but let's, Tom, let's dive into this Syria bid round, et cetera, topic.

As you know very well, and most of our listeners know, Syria is back on the map now for the first time in a long time.

And we've got some terms to talk about.

They've got a round running in this El Ward area, seven fields in a basin called the Widyan that I'm not familiar with.

It's right up against the Iraqi border.

These are all like mid to late 80s discoveries, I think.

And the terms that are being offered, and we'll get into some of the detail, but not all of it.

It's 15 years with an optional five.

And then this week, I'm probably bollocksing this up, but this week they rewrote the commercial terms in mid-round and they pushed the deadline out to the 3rd of September.

Correct whatever I got wrong there and tell me what to make of the sequencing.

I think I've left out something.

No, I mean, that's a pretty good start, I think.

Yeah, I mean, effectively, I think we should roll back and firstly, you know, publicly commend the Syrians for actually getting two bid rounds off the ground, you know, in quick succession, despite, you know, all the obvious domestic issues and, you know, the infrastructure and economic woes that the country still remains as they're finding its feet.

So I think, you know, we should start off with a positive on that front.

So, yeah, just as a bit about the sequencing.

So the award tender, which you're right, it's for, what was it, seven fields in, maybe we could call it the Euphrates-Graben, close to the Iraqi border.

That's another synonym we could perhaps might be more familiar with the listeners.

Yeah, so the launch for this project This tender came just a day, I think it was, after the first bid round for what was called the MAC area.

And MAC is, unsurprisingly, the first letters of the four fields that were on offer.

And this bid round was, sorry, the four fields for this bid round are in the Palmeride fold bout.

So we're in the centre of the country here.

And that closed on the 21st of July with the award round opening on the 20th.

Now, we had no results from the MAC area have been announced as of yet, as of today, which is, where are we, 20th of August, so a month later.

So the Air World tender opened, and as you say, there was then this period of, oh, they then announced they were going to redo the commercial terms and the fiscal terms mid-round and the labour licensing round.

So for me, you know, nobody really sort of opens a bid round and then redoes the terms mid round unless there is either A, something seriously wrong or B, there's an internal and I mean internal as in company push or demand for it.