ALGERIA - In North America.Algeria has helped Anadarko of Houston, in which Sonatrach has a stake, become the largest independent oil and gas company in the US. Having found over 3 bn barrels of high quality oil and gas/condensates in Algeria, where it is the biggest foreign oil producer and investor, Anadarko is about to become the largest independent in the world. Anadarko recently posted a $309m profit for the fourth quarter of 2002, nearly three times the level in the previous year, on the back of high crude oil and gas prices. Its 2002 production was down marginally to about 540,000 b/d of oil equivalent. In 2003, it is to spend $940m of a $2.3 bn Capex (CAPital EXpenditures) Refers to the cost of developing a product or system. OPEX (operating expenditures) are the ongoing costs for running it. For example, the purchase of a printer is the CAPEX, and the annual paper and ink cost is the OPEX. budget on development projects - with a major part in Algeria - in an effort to raise output quickly. It wants to take advantage of high oil prices before they decline in the aftermath of a US-led war against Saddam's Iraq, where it intends to operate on a big scale. It is to spend about $381m on exploration, with a major allocation The apportionment or designation of an item for a specific purpose or to a particular place. In the law of trusts, the allocation of cash dividends earned by a stock that makes up the principal of a trust for a beneficiary usually means that the dividends will be treated as for Algeria, where it continues to find oil in the prolific Berkine Basin. Anadarko has just found oil in this basin, with the first well of its recent exploration drive on Block 404, SFSW-1, spudded in mid-January. The prospect lies north of the giant Ourhoud oilfield, which went on stream in December 2002 with a current output of 160,000 b/d to reach 230,000 b/d by April. In the previous week Anadarko had announced a big oil find at the Hassi Berkine North East prospect on Block 404. Well HBNE-1 was drilled to 3,300 metres 5 km east of the Hassi Berkine oilfield. The well encountered 16 metres of net oil pay in the TAGI Fm and tested at 4,092 b/d of oil and 6.7 MCF/d of gas. In Algeria the US firm will be involved in 665,000-715,000 b/d of oil production and 4,000 MCM/y of gas output by 2005. Anadarko has acquired over 1,000 km of 2D seismic on Blocks 404 and 208 to help it optimise optimise - To perform optimisation. drilling locations in the area. On Block 406b, where its partner is KUFPEC KUFPEC Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company KUFPEC Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Company of Kuwait, it is close to completing an 1,180-km 2D seismic acquisition programme before drilling a first well late this year or in early 2004. The US firm is doing a seismic survey on Block 403c/e which it got last November. Anadarko Algeria Managing Director Rex Alman said the firm was considering options to bring the find on stream as soon as possible, adding: "HBNE is our first successful well since resuming our exploration drilling programme in Algeria in October 2002, and we hope to continue this success into 2003 when a number of exploration wells are planned" (see its Algeria E&P profile in Gas Market Trends 6). In 2000 Anadarko bought Union Pacific Resources of the US which enabled it to more than double output and reserves. As a result of that and high oil and gas prices, Anadarko's fourth-quarter 2000 profit rose from $28m to $454m on revenue up from $546m to $2.4 bn - eclipsing the growth of larger US rivals. In Feb. 2001 Anadarko acquired Berkeley Petroleum of Canada. This gave it 1.5m gas-rich acres in Canada. (Anadarko produces oil and gas in Texas, Louisiana, Kansas and Algeria. It has an aggressive exploration programme in Alaska, Texas and the Gulf of Mexico Noun 1. Gulf of Mexico - an arm of the Atlantic to the south of the United States and to the east of Mexico Golfo de Mexico Atlantic, Atlantic Ocean - the 2nd largest ocean; separates North and South America on the west from Europe and Africa on the east ). Those acquisitions and a big increase in the US firm's capital caused a fall in Sonatrach's stake in Anadarko, which in early 1999 was 10.2%. The stake was acquired in the 1980s as part of a settlement of an old LNG LNG (liquefied natural gas): see under natural gas. dispute with Panhandle panhandle, in geography, a strip of land projecting from the main body of an area and shaped like the handle of a pan, such as the panhandles of West Virginia, Texas, and Alaska. . Sonatrach has been negotiating a planned stake in an oil refining refining, any of various processes for separating impurities from crude or semifinished materials. It includes the finer processes of metallurgy, the fractional distillation of petroleum into its commercial products, and the purifying of cane, beet, and maple sugar venture in Canada in partnership with its term client Ultramar Diamond Shamrock shamrock, a plant with leaves composed of three leaflets. According to legend it was used by St. Patrick in explaining the doctrine of the Trinity; it is now used as the emblem of Ireland. An artificial or real shamrock leaf is customarily worn on St. Patrick's Day. . UDS UDS Ustedes (Spanish: Formal Plural You) UDS Uniform Data System UDS Unscheduled DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) Synthesis UDS Unix Domain Socket UDS Urodynamics has been purchasing Algerian crude for years. |
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