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 TUNISIA
North Africa
In 1972 the Entreprise Tunisienne d’Activites
Petrolieres (ETAP) was created to oversee the hydrocarbon sector and encourage exploration in an area with only moderate
prospects and difficult reservoirs compared to its larger neighbours.
During the 1980s Tunisia’s oil production stabilised at
around 110,000 Bbls per day but nearly 70% of this came from just two
fields (El Borma and Ashtart). Gas production is climbing, whilst oil output,
although in gross decline, is also resurgent.
 Tunisia still attracts many oil companies because it has
a stable government offering relatively moderate investment terms, a
strong economy and a large and expanding domestic gas market with the
trans-Mediterranean gas trunk line from Algeria to Italy crossing its
territory.
Around 30 companies were exploring in Tunisia during the
1990s in up to 70 licences, higher than any country in the world of
comparable size. Furthermore, the number of companies that have explored
and departed has been far greater.
Tunisia had seen only sporadic exploration before 1940
around known oil seeps in the north. A small gas find was made in 1948
in the NE on Cap Bon Peninsula which led to greater exploration effort
by the French and then by ETAP, the Tunisian state company.
There was no further success anywhere until 1964 when the
oil field, El Borma, was found in the south near the Algerian border in
the Ghadames rifted Palaeozoic basin. This turned out to be by far the largest of
the Tunisian oil fields and was also the main gas supplier.
Five years later another large oil discovery, Ashtart, was made offshore
in SE Tunisia, the Gulf of Gabes in the Tertiary Pelagian basin.
Ashtart became the country’s second largest oil field.
These and other smaller discoveries offered encouragement and, from
1987, a series of smaller finds were made offshore in the Gulf of Gabes,
onshore (including the largest – the 50 mm Bbl Sidi El Kilani field in 1990) and in the north in the Gulf of
Hammamet. However, nothing could match the earlier fields.
The Miskar and adjacent Hasdrubal gas/condensate fields were discovered
in 1974 and 1975 respectively but were not at first developed because of
their high carbon dioxide and nitrogen volumes. In 1996, after Miskar
began production, BG began appraising the Hasdrubal field and
plans to bring it onstream in 2009 as Miskar decline begins. Miskar provides
around two-thirds of Tunisian gas.
In August 1988 Libya and Tunisia resolved their
disagreements over the Gulf of Gabes offshore border and set up a joint
company straddling the “7th November concession.” from which profits are
split, but as yet no developments have been made.
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