Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.10
By Nigar Guliyeva – Trend:
ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded international oil and gas company,can take part in geological exploration on perspective oil and gas areas in Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan can sign documents with ExxonMobil on cooperation in oil and gas projects in October-November.
"Negotiations with ExxonMobil are at the initial stage. The visit of the company's management to Uzbekistan is scheduled for October-November, then documents on cooperation can be signed," a source told Ria Novosti.
The preliminary agreements on cooperation with ExxonMobil were reached during the visit of President Shavkat Mirziyev to the U.S. on September 18-20, according to him.
A representative of Uzbekneftegaz revealed that during the visit of ExxonMobil management the sides plan to mull participation of ExxonMobil in geological exploration on promising oil and gas areas in Uzbekistan, as well as projects on increasing oil and gas output in the fields with falling production.
The government of Uzbekistan also plans to invite the American company to participate in the project for the production of polyester for the Uzbek light industry on the basis of one of the oil refineries (refineries), a representative of Uzbekneftegaz added.
To date, more than 60% of the total area of prospective hydrocarbon subsoil plots with the predicted hydrocarbon resources at the level of 4.1 billion tons of equivalent fuel (52.5% of the total volume of forecast resources) has been transferred to foreign companies. The licensed areas are explored and developed by Russian Gazprom and Lukoil, Chinese CNPC and Vietnamese Petrovietnam.
The capacities of Uzbekneftegaz allow to ensure the extraction of natural gas in the amount of about 70 billion cubic meters and liquid hydrocarbons in the volume of 8 million tons per year.