In response to the Sheshinski committee's final report, Noble Energy Inc. (NYSE: NBL) CEO Charles Davidson said that he welcomed the easements included in the report, but that they were not acceptable to the company.
"Noble has not yet had the chance to assess the full impact of the committee's recommendations, but Noble's position in principle is that it opposes making retroactive changes in the fiscal terms applied on the reserves discovered before the committee was established, such as Tamar and Mari B, where substantial investments have already been made assuming that the current fiscal terms would continue to apply to them," Davidson said.
He added, "Noble is pleased that the committee now chose OECD countries as the basis for comparison, but wants to state that there is an incompatibility between the average of the government's take in OECD countries that the committee mentioned and the statistical average calculated by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which is 44%. Noble showed this calculation to the committee, and it will support an independent review to examine this incompatibility in these figures. Noble cannot understand why the Israeli government's take should be greater than the government's take in countries such as the US and UK, which have substantially more stable and developed markets."
Noble Energy is the largest shareholder in the Yam Tethys' Mari B reserve, Tamar and Dalit.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 4, 2011
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