Reuters: Shell/Exxon NAM may reopen Dutch oilfields-paper
Mon May 19, 2008 4:27am EDT
AMSTERDAM, May 19 (Reuters) – The Dutch NAM oil joint venture, owned by Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc. (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile,Research)(RDSb.L: Quote, Profile,Research) and Exxon Mobil (XOM.N:Quote, Profile, Research), is mulling reopening old oilfields in the Netherlands, a paper reported on Monday.
NAM is considering reopening some oilfields in the west of the country, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported, as oil prices rocket to highs near to $128 a barrel.
“We are currently looking at different fields where oil was extracted in the past,” NAM spokesman Reinier Treur said.
“Most of them are situated in the west of the Netherlands,” he added, but he would not give more precise details of the fields and how much oil he thought was still available.
NAM has already said it is reopening its 1 billion-barrel Dutch Schoonebeek field in the east of the country, the largest onshore oilfield in northwestern Europe, which produced about 250 million barrels between 1948 and 1996.
Production there was stopped more than 11 years ago as the thick oil was hard to extract with the techniques and infrastructure available at the time.
“In the Netherlands there are also several other oilfields which have been shut down but where oil is still sitting in the ground,” Treur told the paper.
(Reporting by Catherine Hornby)
© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved
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