Fiji company signs up with US oil explorer

June 27, 2009 02:38:05 PM

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A Fiji timber company headed by former Viti Landowners and Resource Association board representative Masi Kaumaitotoya has signed a letter of intent with Texas-based Savoy Energy Corporation to create a joint venture in Fiji.

Savoy Energy this week announced the venture, saying the companies will seek to formalise a joint venture/ partnership that would create a new combined entity designed to license properties in Fiji for oil exploration and drilling rights.

“Our research has shown the island of Fiji and its structural reefal traps has a tremendous amount of oil reserves and we’re hoping to work closely with Masi Corp in an effort to harvest those reserves in the most efficient, profitable, and responsible way possible,” said Art Bertagnolli, CEO of Savoy Energy Corp.

A Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission report titled “Fiji Petroleum Data Package" states: "Over twenty structural reefal traps have been identified on the seismic lines in the Late Miocene and Pliocene sequences, mostly in Bligh Water Basin.”

“Estimates of potential un-risked recoverable reserves are 270 million barrels of oil per structure. If structural-stratigraphic trapping occurs, recoverable reserves could increase to over one billion barrels of oil per structure."

Fiji forms part of the Southwest Pacific island arc system, which marks the boundary between the Indo-Australia and Pacific plates.

The Bligh Water Basin and Bau Waters Basin are said to possess excellent potential for hydrocarbons.

Fiji lies on the same regional play trend of Miocene reefs which produce oil in Irian Jaya, Indonesia and gas/condensate in offshore Papua New Guinea. Fiji's basins have many similarities with the oil and gas producing, arc-related basins of Southeast Asia.

An oil seep in Bligh Water Basin and oil and gas shows in wells provide evidence that hydrocarbons have been generated in the basins.

Kaumaitotoya, who, in 2006 was linked to the controversial Office of International Treasury Control and the promise of its representative Dr Keith Scott to give Viti Landowners over US$6 billion, said he would comment later on the deal with Savoy Energy.