Tunisia hush-hush talks between trident energy and eni

摘要

According to our information, Trident Energy, the junior founded in 2016 by six Perenco managers and backed by private equity fund Warburg Pincus, is about to close a deal to purchase a share of ENI’s Tunisian licences. The two companies have been in talks for months ( AEI 805) but only over ENI’s onshore permits in the Tataouine Governate, the country’s southernmost region. Trident sent a delegation to Tunis this week to sign the transaction with ENI and the Tunisian authorities, which own 50% of the blocks via state-owned firm ETAP. The negotiations covered the fields of Adam, Oued Zar and Makrouga, which lie alongside the Libyan border, and Djebel Grouz, El Borma and Debech, which abut the Algerian border. The permits all produce crude oil and associated gas that is then sent along pipelines to processing units operated by Societe Tunisienne d’Electricite et de Gaz, some 350km from where they are produced. In 2016, ENI’s Tunisian fields produced 27,000 boepd, 11,000 of which was recorded as the Italian firm’s production. As Africa Energy Intelligence revealed, this operation is somewhat of a return match for Trident’s CEO Jean-Michel Jacoulot. In 2015, when working for Perenco, Jacoulot had pushed for the Perrodo family company to purchase ENI’s Tunisian assets, which lie adjacent to its existing assets in the country ( AEI 758). His efforts, however, were unsuccessful at the time.