Yahoo Finance TOTAL Expands Operation in the Middle East With Partnership
TOTAL S.A. TOT announced that it has entered into a partnership with the Supreme Petroleum Council of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) to further expand its operations in the resource-rich Middle East region. TOTAL is granted a 20% participating interest in the new offshore Umm Shaif & Nasr concession and 5% in the Lower Zakum concession, effective Mar 9, 2018, for a total participation fee of $1.45 billion.
These two 40-year concession agreements will assure 80,000 barrels of oil per day in 2018 for TOTAL. This will boost liquid production of the company, which was 1,389 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day during the fourth quarter of 2017.
United Arab Emirates is among the top oil producers in the Middle East region that has a huge reserve of crude oil. TOTAL has been operating in this country since the last 80 years.
Resource-Rich Middle East
The Middle East region is among the highest producers of oil on a global scale and TOTAL has a sizeable presence in this region. During the fourth quarter of 2017, the company produced 457,000 barrels of oil per day from the Middle East and North Africa, reflecting year-over-year growth of 25%.
TOTAL has plans to expand its operations further in this region through extension of existing partnerships. In addition to Al-Shaheen project in Qatar, South Pars 11 in Iran and Berkine basin assets in Algeria will help the company boost total production from this region to 800,000 barrels per day in 2020.
Due to the presence of high-quality reserves in the region, other major integrated oil and gas companies like BP p.l.c. BP, Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM, and Eni S.p.A. E among others have operations in this region.
Looking Ahead
TOTAL’s long-term outlook is likely to increase upstream production on an average of 5% per year between 2016 and 2022. TOTAL expects to achieve its targeted production growth on the back of production boosts from new start-ups.
TOTAL is presently working on optimizing the design of capital projects and also concentrating on the proper execution of these projects, as well as lowering capital costs. The company plans to invest $14 billion in 2018 and another $13-$15 billion annually from 2018 to 2020.
Price Movement
In a year’s time, TOTAL’s shares have returned 14.5% compared with the industry’s rally of 6.1%
Zacks Rank
TOTAL has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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