Cliveden Group is an independent group of companies, privately owned by senior oil and
gas professionals with extensive international experience and contacts. The group can trace its origins back to 1990 and is composed of several related corporations, all engaged in various aspects of the petroleum industry from exploration and production to refined products marketing and trading. Recently, Cliveden has been focused on growth through

high-impact international exploration and the development of various concessions on the African continent. The group is proud to have developed successful business relationships in each of the countries where operations are being conducted. The Cliveden Group’s future plans are to become a leading player in the global energy markets. Headquarters are based in Geneva, Switzerland.
 

Philosophy

Cliveden’s corporate philosophy is entrepreneurial, building upon key contacts and international alliances in oil exploration, trading and development worldwide. The Group brings a wide range of expertise and experience including technical and financial skills to each project. This skill set is combined with leading international and local partners to allow exploration and development to progress rapidly, uniquely positioning the Cliveden Group for future growth. We encourage innovation and teamwork as key values in the process.

Our vision is to be recognized as a pacesetter in creating sustainable value growth through innovative energy solutions and unique partnerships. To realize this vision, we are applying a differentiated business model that takes us beyond a conventional oil exploration business. In implementing this new business model we aim to use our size as an advantage combining our international connections, technical know-how and industry experience with the speed and agility of a small enterprise and a willingness to do things differently.
 



History

Origins
The Cliveden Group was formed in 1990. The Group’s primary business was in marketing and trading crude oil and refined petroleum products. In the early 1990’s, Cliveden Group was heavily involved in processing gas condensate and running two refineries in Russia. Over the term of this contract, more than 3,000,000 metric tons of gas condensate and 4,000,000 metric tons of crude oil were processed and traded.

Group Development
The Cliveden Group continued to expand in the early 1990’s and new opportunities were presented. In the mid 1990s Cliveden embarked upon a new international strategy of acquiring acreage in under-explored but prospective regions. Utilizing its extensive international contacts, Cliveden paid special attention to identifying the marketing needs of a few specific oil exporting countries. Consequently, the Group made extensive headway in the U.S. and African crude oil markets. As a result of this new strategy, the Cliveden Group was awarded significant crude oil supply contracts with the governments of several African countries over the past few years and has transformed its business model to enter the upstream business of exploration and field development. The first and most significant achievement was Cliveden’s obtaining an exploration and development concession in the Republic of Chad which was signed in 1999.

Into the 21st Century
The shift in company strategy from marketing and trading to the upstream business has led Cliveden Group to significant growth and forced necessary company reorganization. Constantly focusing on future potential opportunities, Cliveden has recently closed its Moscow office and reduced its trading operations. Today, Cliveden is staffed with more than 100 seasoned oil industry geologists, geophysicists, engineers and oilfield operations personnel who have more than an accumulated 1000 years of oilfield experience between them. Cliveden has set its future strategy to seek agreements with leading North American and international oil companies with a view of finding and producing oil and gas, mainly on the African continent. To date, Cliveden has entered into a number of alliances with leading industrial groups for long term, multi-country projects.

Cliveden’s team demonstrates a commitment to partnership, performance and environmental excellence. They know first-hand that today's energy industry promises more opportunities than ever before. With expectations of tight upstream global oil markets for the next decade, Cliveden’s future has never been brighter.

 
 
Projects / Companies

CHAD
Background
   
 

In 1999, the Exxon Consortium (consisting of ExxonMobil, Petronas and ChevronTexaco) had to relinquish most of the acreage surrounding the Doba-Doseo basins area in the Republic of Chad. Initially, the consortium had plans to explore this vast concession.

In the same year, Cliveden Petroleum Chad was granted the entire Permit “H” area surrendered by Exxon and set up an office in N'Djamena. This concession includes the Doba, Doseo, Salamat and Bongor basins as well as Lake Chad and is 268,240 km2. It also includes the Erdis area of a further 171,000 km2 on the border with Libya. As a result of acquiring this concession, Cliveden Petroleum Chad became the only title-owner of the so-called Lake Chad, Chari and Erdis permits comprising a total of 439,240 km2. For comparison purposes, this concession is almost equal in size to the State of Texas or the size of France.
  Permit 'H' is divided into three areas:

Area I: Zone du Chari, is located in the Doseo and Bongor troughs of Southern Chad and covers approximately 165,600 sq km bordering on Cameroon and the Central African Republic. It surrounds Esso's South Chari Block.

Area II: Lake Chad is located in the Chad Basin at the western part of the country near the borders of Cameroon and Niger. It is approximately 102,640 sq km in area.

Area III : Erdis, is located in the Al Kufra Basin (Mourdi and Borkou-Ennedi Sub-basins) in the north part of the country near the borders of Libya and Sudan. It is approximately 171,000 sq km in area.

The acreage is highly prospective, completely surrounding the current acreage held by the Esso- operated consortium of Esso, Chevron, and Petronas on which proven reserves of approximately 1 billion barrels recoverable (plus probable and possible reserves of another 1 billion barrels) have been discovered. Access to the oil Chad / Cameroon oil export pipeline, completed at the end of 2002, has been guaranteed by the government of Chad.

In order to explore this massive concession, Cliveden set up Sahara Seismic in 2000. Sahara Seismic Ltd. (SSL) is a seismic data acquisition company based in the Republic of Chad. It is designed to compete on a cost basis with non African contractors providing quality seismic data at significantly lower cost using current state of the art recording and source systems.
   
  Early Development
   
 

Throughout 2000 and 2001, Cliveden Petroleum Chad continued to build up it’s in- country infrastructure and conduct further seismic testing. Due to the massive size of the concession, Cliveden Petroleum Chad realized it needed to bring in a substantial partner to help in the exploration and development process.

In March of 2002, the Cliveden Petroleum Chad farmed out 50% of its interest in Permit “H” to EnCana Corporation of Canada. With an approximate market capitalization of US$25 Billion, EnCana Corporation is one of the world’s leading independent oil and gas companies and is driven to be the industry’s high performance benchmark in production cost, per share growth and value creation. http://www.encana.com/operations/upstream/new_ventures.html

Throughout 2002 and 2003, exploration of the concession has continued. In the course of 2002, an additional 3,100 km of new seismic lines were acquired. This trend continued in 2003 with a program of seismic acquisition of a further 3,000 km of lines. The areas being explored included the Bongor Basin, the Logone-Birni Basin on the border of Cameroon and an interesting potential in the Salamat Basin. The seismic work has been carried out by two different companies in conjunction with EnCana Corporation. The drilling of the first well in the concession started at the end of 2003 and future
exploratory wells will be drilled in 2004.
   
  Recent Developments
 

At the end of 2003, the Cliveden Petroleum Chad sold a 50% shareholding to two major Chinese organizations. The Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and CITIC each bought 25% of Cliveden Petroleum Chad. CNPC is one of the world's leading integrated energy companies. Its operations cover a broad spectrum of upstream and downstream activities, field operations and technical services, and equipment manufacturing and supply.

CNPC serves as China's largest producer and supplier of crude oil and natural gas, holding a dominant position in domestic petroleum production, processing, and marketing sectors. At the same time, CNPC is also a major producer and supplier of refined oil products and petrochemicals.

As one of the largest service suppliers in the global petroleum and petrochemical industries, CNPC can provide operational services and technical support in such areas as geophysical prospecting, well drilling, logging, well testing, down hole operations, oilfield surface facilities construction, pipeline construction, refining and petrochemical projects, and manufacturing and supply of petroleum equipment.

CITIC is a window on China's opening to the outside world. Since its inception, CITIC has always adhered to the principle of innovation. In line with government laws, regulations and policies, CITIC has attracted and utilized foreign capital, introduced advanced technologies, and adopted advanced and scientific international practice in operation and management. In the light of the law of economy, CITIC has made explorations in many business fields with remarkable success and has achieved good economic results. By doing so, CITIC has made significant contributions to the country's
reform and opening up drive and established good reputation both domestically and abroad.
   
  Future
   
 
Cliveden’s future strategy for the Permit “H” concession in Chad is threefold:

1. More intensive exploration
With our partners of EnCana and the Chinese government, we plan to continue to explore intensively throughout the most promising areas of the concession in the future.
2. Develop discoveries
The first test wells are being drilled in 2004 and more will be drilled in the future. Using state of the art seismic surveying techniques, we are confident major new finds will be discovered in the near future. As these discoveries are proven, we will work with our partners to develop them to their maximum potential.
 

3. Utilize the Cameroon / Chad pipeline
The project is to develop the oil fields at Doba in southern Chad (at a cost of US$1.5 billion) and construct a 1,070 km pipeline to offshore oil-loading facilities on Cameroon's Atlantic coast (US$2.2 billion). The sponsors are ExxonMobil of the U.S. (the operator, with 40% of the private equity), Petronas of Malaysia (35%), and ChevronTexaco of the U.S. (25%). The project could result in nearly US$2 billion in revenues for Chad (averaging US$80 million per year) and US$500 million for Cameroon (averaging US$20 million per year) over the 25-year production period.

First production started in late 2003. The three fields are expected to produce 1 bbo over the life of the project and peak production is expected to reach 225,000 bo/d. The project will require the drilling of about 300 wells including a small number (6) water disposal wells and gas injection wells.

Cliveden Petroleum Chad has access to this pipeline. Permit “H” completely surrounds the ExxonMobil concession and as discoveries are made in this area, Cliveden Petroleum Chad will develop the wells and use the pipeline to transport the crude to world markets.