By Libya Herald reporters.
Tunis, 28 April 2015:
France’s Total, the first foreign oil company to resume operations in Libya after the revolution . . .[restrict]has now become the first overseas player to write down the value of a large lump of its Libyan assets.
The firm has announced that it is writing down $755 million from its onshore properties. These are principally in the Mabrouk field in the Sirte Basin, some 170 kms south of Sirte. Total, which was the operator in partnership with NOC and Norway’s Statoil, has withdrawn from the field because of collapsing security. This February gunmen attacked the field.
Total does however have licences in the offshore Al-Jurf field, where it is in partnership with Wintershall and the NOC.
In the first quarter of this year the French firm saw its global income slump 22 percent, partly from weak oil prices but also because of the write down on its Libyan assets.
It is a far cry from December 2012 when the company threw a big party at Tripoli’s Corinthia hotel the celebrate its first year of operations in the new Libya.
The then country head, Bernard Avignon announced plans to shoot onshore seismic and to start exploration drilling both on and offshore.
Four months last came the bombing of the French embassy in Tripoli. The attack came in the middle of the Oil and Gas show in the capital’s international Fairground, which was heavily sponsored by Total. On the last day, none of the company’s representatives was on their stand.
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