German Chancellor starts up BASF subsidiary Wintershall’s new oil production

The largest German producer of crude oil and natural gas is strengthening its production in Libya: Wintershall, a wholly-owned BASF subsidiary, is a company with one of the longest operating records in this North African country, and has been successfully engaged in the exploration and production of oil there since 1958. During his visit on Friday morning, the Federal Chancellor, Gerhard Schrцder, in the company of the Libyan Prime Minister Dr. Shukri Mohammed Ghanem, started up Wintershall’s new oil production facility in the Libyan desert, 1000 kilometres south-east of Tripoli.

The BASF subsidiary is one of the leading foreign oil producers in Libya. After his visit to Wintershall, the German Chancellor continued to Tripoli for talks with the Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi.

“Libya is one of our selected core regions where the company enjoys a high level of regional and technological expertise. We will continue to build on our past successes,” announced Reinier Zwitserloot, chairman of the board of executive directors at Wintershall. The company has been producing oil from five fields (As Sarah, Jakhira, Nakhla, Tuama and Hamid) in the Libyan desert’s Sirte Basin, and also, in a consortium that includes the Libyan National Oil Corporation (NOC) and French TOTAL, from the Al Jurf offshore field in the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya. Wintershall has already invested over 1.2 billion US dollars in Libya and has drilled over 120 wells in total. Over the next three years, the BASF subsidiary will spend a further 400 million US dollars in searching for new and developing existing fields.

This year, Wintershall has already carried out five exploration and appraisal wells in its concession areas in the Libyan desert, and three further wells are to be completed by the end of the year. All previous five wells have struck oil*), as the company announced during the Chancellor’s visit. “Two of these wells have even provided evidence of a new oil field,” reported Bernhard Schmidt, the Wintershall Director responsible for Exploration and Production. The development of these new strikes is currently being worked out in co-ordination with the National Oil Corporation (NOC).

Meanwhile, the German Chancellor was able to start up a new production facility near the Jakhira Oasis on Friday. Wintershall has been producing oil from the field of the same name since 1976 and has in the last few years accelerated the development of the field and expanded its production facilities here and in other existing fields. In so doing, Wintershall has achieved a 7.5-fold increase in its production in Libya since 1990.