Petroleum Supervisor Yosef Mimram granted four new offshore gas exploration licenses and transferred ownership of several others. The winners include several new faces in the industry, including Nochi Dankner, Teddy Sagi, Ofer Nimrodi, Larry Mizel, and Yosef Sultan. Mizel and Sagi bid in the deep water permits in the area of the former Benjamin license, 40 kilometers west of Hadera.
Sagi teamed up with Lapidoth Heletz LP. (TASE: LPHL), controlled by Yaakov Luxembourg to win the Benjamin East permit. Mizel's Coleridge Group LP won the Benjamin West permit. Coleridge is registered in Colorado, and Mizel's partners in it include Norway's AGR Group ASA (OMX: AGR), which mostly operates in the North Sea, and Israel's Ecolog Engineering Ltd.
The second competition was for permits in the former Hof license, a shallow water strip running parallel to the coast between Ashkelon and Bat Yam. Isramco Ltd. (Nasdaq: ISRL; TASE: ISRA.L) previously owned the license. The Hof license was divided into two permits: Canada's Adira Energy Corporation (XETRA: AORLB8; Bulletin Board: AMGOF) subsidiary Adira Energy Israel Ltdwon the northern section, and Cassal Drilling Ltd. won the southern permit.
The Petroleum Council also approved the transfer of several licenses. The most important of these was approval of the acquisition in March of the Mira and Sara by the Dankner-Nimrodi-Sultan group, Emanuelle Energy Ltd., from PetroMed Corporation for $16 million.
Emanuelle Energy is owned by Nimrodi's Israel Land Energy Ltd., a unit of Israel Land Development Company (TASE: ILDC); Dankner's IBD DT (2000) Energy Ltd., held through IDB Holding Corp. Ltd. (TASE:IDBH); Sultan's Modiin Energy LP (TASE:MDIN.L); and Bontan Inc. (Bulletin Board: BNTNF) unit Israel Petroleum Corporation (IPC).
The Petroleum Council also approved the transfer of part of the rights to the Sarit license, offshore from Ashdod, from Ratio Oil Exploration (1992) LP (TASE:RATI.L) and Lapidoth Heletz to Modi'in Energy and a company owned by Halman Aldubi Investment House Ltd.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 17, 2010
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