Company

Tumar Petrol

Tumar Petrol LLP

Sagiz site: Geographically located in the Atyrau and Aktobe regions of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Previously owned by Sagiz Petroleum LLP. The plot area is about 5000 sq. km, operating fields of Sagiz Petroleum LLP and groundwater deposits are excluded.

Dear colleagues, I hasten to share great news! On June 8 of this year, drilling of the first exploration well Tumar East No. 1 was started, where the construction of the well has already been completed. The results of testing and trying out of 1-object are positive! A non-overflowing oil flow was obtained. To date, the 2nd exploration well Tumar West No. 2 is being drilled.

So what was the path from the acquisition to the start of drilling of the first prospecting and exploratory well No. 1 Tumar East?

In 2020, the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan (ME RK) announced that the acquisition of subsoil use rights would be through electronic auctions. It should be noted that before this, subsoil users had to submit all the necessary documents in paper form. Now one needs to upload documents to the gosreestr.kz website. However, if the documents do not meet the requirements of the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan, then you may simply not be allowed to participate in the auction. Therefore, it was definitely a very important process, which we took seriously. As a result, we were not only admitted to the auction, but, according to protocol No. 164425, “TUMAR PETROL” LLP was declared the Winner for the rights to receive subsoil use for the Sagiz block.

On March 15, 2021, a combined exploration and production contract No. 4902-UVS-M was signed between the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan and “TUMAR PETROL” LLP.

An exploration project (EP) was developed and approved, according to which seismic testing work (STW) was to be carried out in the amount of 200 square km. on the structures "Tumar" and "Baishagan" according to the results of which it was supposed to drill exploration wells.

One of the main barriers for us was the new environmental code, which came into force in 2021. Additional approval procedures were included and the review time was extended, moreover, some EP approval procedures were duplicated: this was a requirement not only for the subsoil user, but also for contractors, despite the fact that the contract area is the same. We have successfully coped with this difficult stage.

On April 05, 2022, we successfully held public hearings with the local population. The public hearings themselves were tense, there were heated discussions. The main subjects of discussion were: employment of the local population, participation of the Company in the social life of both the district and the region as a whole, support for socially vulnerable segments of the population, etc.

Previously, public hearings were held quite “formally”: as a rule, subsoil users always received approval. However, in our case, it was possible to observe a high level of activity on the part of the population. Perhaps this is due to the events of January 2022 - people have become more actively involved in such processes. In a word, it was not easy, the atmosphere of the public hearing, which took place in the House of Culture of the Sagiz village, was very tense, but we passed this test successfully and received the support of the population.

At the end of October 2022, we started the STW directly at the Tumar and Baishagan sites. In May 2023, the STW was completed on the above structures. In parallel, work was underway to process and interpret 3D data.

I would like to note that since the beginning of the acquisition of the site, almost 2 years have been spent on “paperwork”, in our opinion, this is a lot, especially for exploration. There are a lot of risks associated not only with geology, but also with approved procedures, there is no integration between government agencies - in other words, all the risks are only with the subsoil user.

A certain lesson was learned, and we formed a number of proposals for the subsoil code, land and environmental codes to improve the investment climate in the field of exploration and development of hydrocarbon deposits, which were provided to the working groups to amend the above legal acts.