Offshore staff
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Petronas has launched the Malaysia Bid Round (MBR) 2021, which offers 17 offshore exploration blocks.
Three are in the Malay basin (PM340, PM327 and PM342), four in the Sabah basin (SB409, SB412, 2W and X), and six are in the Sarawak basin (ND3A, SK4E, SK328, SK427, SK439 and SK440).
Included in blocks PM342, SK4E, SK328 and SB409 are six discovered fields.
MBR 2021 also offers four deepwater blocks (ND3A, 4E, 2W and X) off the coast of Sarawak and Sabah, where there have been exploration discoveries in recent years.
Further opportunities will be made available later this year concerning late-life assets and undeveloped smaller discovered fields, Petronas added.
For this year’s bid round, the company introduced three new production sharing contract (PSC) terms. The first is the enhanced profitability PSC terms, applicable to nine of the shallow-water blocks on offer.
Terms were adapted to take into account requests from companies to provide more attractive returns under current market conditions.
Malaysia’s new small field assets and late life assets (LLA) PSC terms, introduced recently, were also developed based on feedback from oil and gas companies with niche capability seeking to extract greater value from discovered resources and LLAs.
Petronas has also incorporated several non-fiscal enhancements for the exploration blocks being offered such as larger block size, flexible bidding options e.g. the option to merge two adjacent blocks under one PSC, transferable minimum work commitments between two adjacent PSCs and phased exploration period.
In addition, Petronas is offering three large areas for study. The first is south of the Malay basin offshore Peninsular Malaysia, where pre-Tertiary and basement emerging plays yet to be explored.
The other two areas cover the deepwater of north of Luconia that extends northeast to Sabah, which could hold extension of proven plays.
Petronas has opened a virtual data room which will be accessible until Aug. 6, 2021, allowing interested parties to conduct data room reviews anywhere and anytime within the bid round period.
The subsequently bid evaluation process will likely take place between August and September, with PSCs set to be awarded before year-end.
03/08/2021
