IHS Energy, a part of IHS Markit, said on Friday that it is acting as an advisor for the licensing round and will facilitate the roadshows on behalf of the ministry.

As Offshore Energy Today reported in an article published on Friday, the government of Israel has approved the delineation of new offshore oil and gas exploration sites to be offered to international oil and gas community.

According to the recommendation of the petroleum council to the Ministry of Energy, the initial stage will include the marketing of 24 blocks in an international competitive process that calls oil and gas companies to take part in Israel’s first bid round and the renewed explorations of natural gas and oil in Israel’s economic zone.

The MIEWR will offer blocks in Israel’s offshore waters of the Levant Basin, located in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The blocks, some of which are adjacent to recent major gas discoveries, namely the Tamar and Leviathan gas fields, are a maximum size of 400 km2, and sit in water depths of between 1,500 meters and 1,800 meters.

According to IHS, the September 1 event in London will kick-off the roadshows with another one in Singapore on Tuesday, September 6. Later this year, the ministry will schedule an additional information session in Houston. The round will officially start in November 2016, while closing date for bids on the offered blocks will be March 2017.

Tim Hemsted, managing director for IHS Energy upstream energy consulting, said: “We are pleased to assist the MIEWR with the facilitation of its roadshows for Israel’s first licensing round.

“We look forward to bringing together government representatives with members of industry and representatives of oil companies to discuss the blocks on offer.”

The company said that at each roadshow event, the MIEWR staff will present the bid-round schedules and guidelines, the legal and fiscal terms, as well as a technical overview of the hydrocarbon potential of the nominated blocks and a discussion regarding the availability of data. The event will also include a presentation on the gas monetization options in the Eastern Mediterranean.

IHS said that a recent third-party basin modeling study concluded that as much as an estimated 6.6 billion barrels of oil and 2.13 trillion cubic meters (75 trillion cubic feet) of gas are yet to be found in the offshore part of the basin.

A data package, which includes speculative seismic data and historical well data, is available to interested parties to enable further assessment of the geological prospectivity of the blocks being offered by MIEWR.

Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli Minister of Energy, will be available for private meetings with interested oil and gas companies after the technical presentations at both roadshow venues.

Source: Offshore Energy Today