The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A joint venture has submitted a licence application to explore for oil in eight areas north of Grand Bahama, a notice published by the Government revealed yesterday.

The Gazzetted notice said the application had come from Atlantic Petroleum Ltd and Bahamas Petroleum Ltd, although it was unclear whether the latter is Bahamas Petroleum Company (BPC), the only entity to be approved by the Government to-date.

Neither Kenred Dorsett, minister of the environment, nor Simon Potter, BPC’s chief executive, could be contacted last night for comment. However, BPC had previously submitted several licence applications for exploration north of Grand Bahama in a joint venture with Norwegian oil giant, Statoil.

Statoil withdrew from the joint venture earlier this year, and thus the applications could merely be replacing it with Atlantic Petroleum. A company with the same name as the latter is based in the Faroe Islands, and has obtained exploration licences off that island nation, plus the UK and Ireland.

The gazzetting of the licence applications comes after some encouragement for oil exploration firms, Mr Dorsett having recently revealed that the draft Bill and regulations to govern oil exploration had been sent to Cabinet.

BPC, meanwhile, is understood to be still ushering through its data room potential ‘farm-in’ (joint venture) partners for the first $120 million exploration well it must spud by April 2015.