Licensing Round 2012/13

The Government of Greenland has approved that the next hydrocarbon licensing round will be carried out in the Greenland Sea in 2012 and 2013. The invitation letter, Model Licence and other relevant tender documentats can be found below. The application procedure, including requirements, is described in the Letter of Invitation. For further details see also Model Licence and Model Joint Operating Agreement.

Documents regarding licensing round 2012/13:

Letter of Invitation

Model Licence - English version

Model Licence - Danish version

Model Affidavit

Model Guarantee

Model Joint Operating Agreement

Model Joint Operating Agreement, Appendix A

Model Joint Operating Agreement, Appendix B

The licensing area in the Greenland Sea (offshore Northeast Greenland) has been chosen on the basis of a strategic environmental impact assessment for the region. The strategic environmental impact assessment was carried out by the Danish National Environmental Institute and the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources to ensure that hydrocarbon activities conducted in the area can take place on an environmentally sustainable foundation. Further to this, studies on ice and other physical conditions of the areas have also been carried out in preparation of the tendering round.

Further to this, studies on ice and other physical conditions of the areas have also been carried out in preparation of the tendering round. The Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU-Space) has for the BMP made a report: “KANUMAS MET/ICE/OCEAN Overview Report 2011” The report gives an updated overview of physical environmental conditions, especially ice conditions, observed in recent or near future licence areas off the north-east and north-west coasts of Greenland.

There will be stringent requirements on health and work safety as well as on environmental protection. Use of the best available technology will be required to reduce the environmental impact and risk of accidents.

Seismic surveys and other geophysical data indicate that large hydrocarbon deposits can be present in the area. USGS completed in 2007 an estimate of undiscovered oil and gas resources in the subsurface in the sea in the East Greenland province, which include the Greenland Sea licensing area. The mean estimate for oil and gas in the province was calculated at more than 31 billion barrels of oil equivalents.

Opening meeting

On December 1st 2011 the Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum (BMP) announced the opening of the North East Greenland license round.

BMP’s PowerPoint Presentation from the meeting in Copenhagen

As described more thoroughly in the Letter of Invitation, two successive licensing rounds will take place in the Greenland Sea, a pre-round for the Kanumas Consortium Members and an ordinary-round for non-Kanumas Consortium Members. In the pre-round it is a prerequisite that at least one partner is a paying member of the Kanumas Consortium, while this is not a requirement for the ordinary-round. The paying members of the KANUMAS Group are: ExxonMobil, Statoil, BP, Japan National Oil Corporation (JNOC), Chevron and Shell. The publicly owned company NUNAOIL A/S is also member of the KANUMAS Group.

The total area on offer constitutes 49.948 km2 divided into 19 blocks. In the pre-round license area 11 of these blocks is offered, totalling an area of 29.867 km2. The map below show the blocks offered in the pre-license round:

The pre-round has a deadline for submission of applications for prequalification as operators on 1 March 2012 and the deadline for submission of applications for exploration and exploitation licenses is on 15 December 2012.

The purpose of a prequalification process is to ensure that the companies operating in the area:

• Have the necessary experience in exploration and exploitation of oil and gas in difficult areas.
• Have developed a contingency planning system to manage oil activities in the area appropriately with regards to safety, health and environmental aspects.
• Have the necessary financial resources to implement comprehensive oil exploration, development and decommissioning programmes.

In the ordinary-round the remaining 8 blocks, totalling an area of 20.081 km2, will be offered. A map of the offered blocks is shown below: 

The ordinary-round will be formally opened on 15 June 2013 with the following deadlines applying:

Deadline for submission of applications for prequalification as operators on 1 July 2013

Deadline for submission of applications for exploration and exploitation licenses on 15 October 2013

An ArcGIS shapefile of the blocks can be downloaded here (in the WGS84 datum).