Chevron to Start Oil Production in Cambodia in 2011

The Cambodian government estimates that U.S. oil giant Chevron will be able to recover 15 to 20 percent of the estimated 500 million barrels of oil in its offshore exploration block, starting in 2011, national media said on Friday.

Engineering plans for how to extract the oil and get it to shore, as well as details of Chevron's commercial terms, are still being worked out, Te Duong Tara, secretary general of the Cambodian National Petroleum Authority (CNPA), told English-Khmer language newspaper the Cambodian Daily at an industry seminar here on Thursday.

Chevron, which along with minority partners Mitsubishi and GS Caltex controls off-sea Block A, has remained mum about the size of its find and when and if it will commence commercial exploration.

Chevron signed a revenue-sharing agreement with the Cambodian government in 2003, the terms of which are now under renewed negotiations.

Some dozen foreign drillers are now searching for oil and natural gas in six defined blocks in off-sea Cambodia.

Chevron once claimed it had found the resource in its test wells, while other drillers still remained silent.

Experts used to put the potential reserves of oil in offshore Cambodia at two billion barrels, but the Cambodian government usually appeared unsure of various estimates.