DILI, 14 janaury 2022 (TATOLI) – The National Petroleum and Minerals Authority (ANPM) had officially closed the Timor-Leste Second Oil and Gas Licensing Round of 18 blocks.
“Today, we announce to the public that the pre-qualification document submission for Timor-Leste Second Licensing Round is closed. The Second Licensing Rounds was launched on october 3, 2019,” Mateus da Costa, the Executive Director for Explorations and Promotions at the National Petroleum and Mineral Authority (ANPM) made the announcement, at the Ministry of Finance, in Dili.
The timeline of the closing of the bid submission was set to due on October 1, 2021, however, ANPM has decided to extend it until january.
He said ANPM’s team would carry out technical and financial assessments following the closing date of the Second Round Licensing.
“All companies were required to submit their documents online. So, we gave them the username and the password to have access to the site that we have created to upload their documents. For those companies who sent their documents via email, we always remind them to upload their documents to this site. It’s good for the local and overseas oil and gas companies to submit their documents online,” he said.
Costa said once the documents of companies were submitted for the pre-qualification, the team would immediately review the document following the submission: “If the companies missing some of their documents to complete their application, then we would contact them to complete it.”
The date for the opening of the submission of the bid is January 24, 2022, while the closing date of the bid submission has been set to be due on march 04.
“Thus, we have two months to carry out the evaluation process before recommending to the relevant ministry to approve and announce the result of the public tender on april 2022,” he stressed.
He said so far nine oil and gas companies had submitted their documents for the pre-qualification phase: “The majority of these companies are international oil and gas firms based in USA, Australia, UK, and Italy.
In october 2019, the government launched the county’s second licensing round, releasing a total of 18 new blocks for public tender, covering a large percentage of the total onshore and offshore area of the country.
Seven of the offered blocks are onshore. They cover all the northern and eastern halves of the country, a total of nearly 10.000 km2, with the largest covering the whole eastern end of the country. The remaining 11 new blocks are in the offshore area to the south of the country, in the Timor Sea, he said.
Journalist: Filomeno Martins
Editor: Nelia Borges Rosario
