Madagascar Oil SA is an

oil company The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The largest ...

operating in

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

. It is the principal onshore oil company in Madagascar in terms of oil resources and land. Madagascar Oil's operational office is in

Antananarivo Antananarivo (French language, French: ''Tananarive'', ), also known by its colonial shorthand form Tana, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Madagascar. The administrative area of the city, known as Antananarivo-Renivohitra ("An ...

, Madagascar and its administrative offices are in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

. Its Chairman is Indonesian national Al Njoo. Prior to this, the company was based in

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

and earlier in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, England. The company's flagship oil field is

Tsimiroro Tsimiroro is a large oil field in the onshore Morondava Basin of Madagascar found south of the Bemolanga ultra heavy oil field and south of the town of Morafenobe. It is estimated to contain as many as of heavy oil with 14° to 16° API gra ...

in the

Morondava Basin Morondava Basin is one of the major sedimentary basins of Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island c ...

of western Madagascar. Madagascar Oil wholly owns its subsidiary, Madagascar Oil S.A.

History

Madagascar Oil was founded in 2004 by Canadian engineer Sam Malin and Australian businessman Alan Bond. Its parent company was originally Madagascar Oil Limited (Mauritius). In March 2006, simultaneous with a US$60m fund raising to North American managed hedge funds, the parent company was reorganised as Madagascar Oil Limited in Bermuda. In 2006, Madagascar Oil launched its first licensing round involving 44 offshore blocks in the Morondava Basin.Ian Lewis
Left waiting at the altar in Madagascar
''Petroleum-economist.com'', 27 February 2019 In 2008, a joint venture agreement was executed with Total S.A. granting it operatorship and a 60% interest in the Bemolanga tar sands. In 2010, it raised £50 million in its IPO to finance a pilot project in the Tsimiroro Field. Madagascar Oil was listed on the

Alternative Investment Market AIM (formerly the Alternative Investment Market) is a sub-market of the London Stock Exchange that was launched on 19 June 1995 as a replacement to the previous Unlisted Securities Market (USM) that had been in operation since 1980. It allows ...

(AIM) of the

London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St P ...

from 2010 until 2016. In December 2010, the trade of company's share was suspended after the Malagasy government announcement that the most of the company's oil licenses would be annulled. The dispute was solved and the trade at the AIM restarted in June 2011. The company delisted in 2016, as a condition of its lenders recapitalising the company. On 15 April 2015, the Madagascar government granted to the company a 25-year license on the oil production at the Tsimiroro block 3104. In February 2019, the new Madagascar president

Andry Rajoelina Andry Nirina Rajoelina (Malagasy: ; born 30 May 1974) is a Malagasy politician and businessman who has been the president of Madagascar since 2019. He was previously president of a High Transitional Authority, provisional government from 2009 t ...

cancelled an ongoing licensing round involving 44 blocks in the Morondava basin until further notice.

Description

Madagascar Oil focuses on the development, exploration and production of

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...

. In 2008, Madagascar Oil held the largest licensed onshore acreage in Madagascar. Madagascar Oil holds the large heavy oil fields of

and

Bemolanga Bemolanga is a large oil sands deposit in the onshore Morondava Basin of Madagascar. The deposit was discovered in the early 1900s but was known to locals for centuries. The field is located north of the Tsimiroro heavy oil field and east of th ...

, which are the island's major onshore oil fields. The company operates the 100%-owned Tsimiroro heavy oil field, while

Total S.A. TotalEnergies SE is a French multinational integrated energy and petroleum company founded in 1924 and one of the seven supermajor oil companies. Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas exploration and ...

, its farm-in partner, operates the 40%-owned Bemolanga bitumen field. Tsimiroro has

2P reserves Proven reserves (also called measured reserves, 1P, and reserves) is a measure of fossil fuel energy reserves, such as oil reserves, natural gas reserves, and coal reserves. It is defined as the " antity of energy sources estimated with reasonabl ...

of 614 million barrels and 3C resources of 1.6 billion barrels, in

tar sands Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and wate ...

at depths between 100m and 200m. In addition to the Tsimiroro and Bemolanga, the company holds three exploration blocks: Manambolo, Morondava and Manandaza. On Madagascar Oil's blocks, previous exploration examples include the Manambolo West #1 well, drilled in 1987 that flowed gas at per day on a drill stem test and abandoned as non-commercial partially due to a lack of infrastructure; and the Manandaza well drilled in 1991 that flowed 41° API

light crude oil Light crude oil is liquid petroleum that has a low density and flows freely at room temperature. It has a low viscosity, low specific gravity and high API gravity due to the presence of a high proportion of light hydrocarbon fractions. It generally ...

. Madagascar Oil's projects are governed by

production sharing agreements Production sharing agreements (PSAs) or production sharing contracts (PSCs) are a common type of contract signed between a government and a resource extraction company (or group of companies) concerning how much of the resource (usually oil) extrac ...

signed with

OMNIS {{other uses, Omnis (disambiguation) OMNIS (Office des Mines Nationales et des Industries Stratégiques, formerly known as Office Militaire National pour les Industries Stratégiques) is the Malagasy government organisation, operating under the aus ...

, the relevant Malagasy government agency, in 2004. These agreements provide the

Government of Madagascar Politics of Madagascar takes place in a framework of a semi-presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Madagascar is head of state and the Prime Minister of Madagascar is head of government, and of a pluriform mul ...

with a significant stake in future production. The company's controlling shareholder is the Singapore-based Benchmark Group. Other shareholders are Outrider Management LLC, SEP African Ventures Limited (formerly Persistency Capital LLC), and the John Paul DeJoria Family Trust.

References

{{Reflist, 30em, refs= {{cite news , title=Exxon to resume Madagascar work four years after coup , website=Reuters , date=7 November 2013 , url=https://www.reuters.com/article/exxon-madagascar-idUSL5N0IS1Z120131107 , accessdate=15 December 2015 {{cite news , last=Madison , first=Doug , title=Madagascar Oil's "Buy" Rating Reaffirmed at Mirabaud Securities (MOIL) , website=Dakota Financial News , date = 17 November 2015 , url=http://www.dakotafinancialnews.com/madagascar-oils-buy-rating-reaffirmed-at-mirabaud-securities-moil/661377/ , accessdate= 15 December 2015 {{cite news , last=Rozeboom , first=Annelie , title=Tullow Sees Oil Find in Madagascar as Drilling Set to Start , website= Bloomberg Business , date= 19 September 2013 , url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-19/tullow-expects-oil-find-in-madagascar-as-drilling-set-to-start , accessdate= 15 December 2015 {{cite news , last=Hall , first=Christine , title=Madagascar Oil opening administrative headquarters in Houston , website=

Houston Business Journal American City Business Journals, Inc. (ACBJ) is an American newspaper publisher based in Charlotte, North Carolina. ACBJ publishes The Business Journals, which contains local business news for 44 markets in the United States, Hemmings Motor New ...

, date= 26 March 2007 , url=http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2007/03/26/daily39.html , accessdate= 15 December 2015 {{cite news , title= Madagascar Oil SA décroche le titre minier de mise en valeur du PSC Tsimiroro bloc 3104 , trans-title=Madagascar Oil SA won the mining license of the Tsimiroro block 3104 , agency = Ecofin , date= 16 April 2015 , url= http://www.agenceecofin.com/petrole/1604-28242-madagascar-oil-sa-decroche-le-titre-minier-de-mise-en-valeur-du-psc-tsimiroro-bloc-3104 , accessdate= 15 December 2015, language = French {{cite web , last=Gunter , first=Ford , title=Madagascar Oil, Total to develop oil reserves on island of Madagascar , newspaper =Houston Business Journal , date= 15 September 2008 , url=http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2008/09/15/daily53.html , accessdate= 15 December 2015 {{cite news , last=Perin , first=Monica , title=Well-known London oil company ready to drill into Houston , website=Houston Business Journal , date= 16 April 2007 , url=http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2007/04/16/story11.html , accessdate= 15 December 2015 {{cite news , last=Pons , first=Christophe , title=How will oil affect Madagascar's environmental riches? , website=

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

, date= 25 October 2012 , url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-20075866 , accessdate= 15 December 2015 {{cite book , last= Sellström , first= Tor , title= Africa in the Indian Ocean: Islands in Ebb and Flow , publisher = Brill Publishers , year = 2015 , page = 123 , url= https://books.google.com/books?id=x1LFCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA123 , isbn=9789004292499 {{cite book , last= Hilyard , first = Joseph , title= 2008 International Petroleum Encyclopedia , publisher = PennWell Books , year = 2008 , page = 229 , url= https://books.google.com/books?id=S_Upmb8NZkAC&pg=PA229 , isbn=9781593701642 {{cite web , title = Admission Document , work = Strand Hanson Limited, Mirabaud Securities LLP, GMP Securities Europe LLP , url= http://www.madagascaroil.com/wp-content/uploads/Baobab.pdf , accessdate = 16 December 2015, pages = 18; 21

External links

Official website
Oil and gas companies of Madagascar Oil and gas companies of Bermuda