Libya has unveiled new details from its first upstream oil and gas licensing round in 18 years.
The licensing round offers 22 blocks for exploration and development, split equally between onshore and offshore, according to a summary brochure seen by Argus.
State-owned NOC said the blocks are estimated to hold in-place resources of more than 10bn barrels of oil equivalent (boe), while nine of the blocks contain undeveloped discoveries with estimated in place reserves of 1.68bn boe.
The bid round is being offered up with a new Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) model, replacing the outdated Epsa 4 contract model of Libya's last licensing round in 2007.
NOC said the new PSA could increase contractor internal rate of return (IRR) to 35.8pc compared with 2.5pc under existing terms. Contractors would also share profits with NOC from day one, while a fixed rate for cost recovery would shorten the investment payback period.
While the licensing round was officially launched on 3 March in Tripoli, little or no detail had been unveiled until today. There still appears to be no publicly available information on the timeline for bid submissions and awards.
Libya also appears to have updated its long-standing crude production target of 2mn b/d. The brochure accompanying the licensing round now mentions a "vision to produce 2mn-3mn b/d."
Libya currently produces about 1.4mn b/d of crude and 1.2bn ft³/d of gas, which it wants to increase to 4bn ft³/d.
Oil minister Khalifa Abdulsadek previously told Argus that the licensing round was primarily aimed at boosting reserves and keeping output steady.
The country's political divisions remain a key risk to the success of Libya's output goals and its latest licensing round.
