Woodside Terminates Leviathan Deal

Woodside Petroleum announced Wednesday that it has elected to terminate the memorandum of understanding (MoU) agreed by the Australian firm and the participants in the Leviathan Joint Venture in February this year.

Negotiations between the parties failed to reach a commercially acceptable outcome that would have allowed fully-termed agreements to be executed, Woodside said in a statement.

Earlier this year, Woodside Petroleum and partners in Leviathan field, offshore Israel signed a deal which will allow the Australian firm to buy stake in the licence for $1.03 billion in cash and future revenues.

As per the deal, each of the existing Leviathan partners, Noble Energy, Delek Drilling, Avner Oil Exploration and Ratio Oil Exploration will sell 25 percent stake in the licence.

Woodside CEO Peter Coleman said that this was a difficult decision and one that was not taken lightly.

“All parties have worked very hard to secure an outcome which would be commercially acceptable, but after many months of negotiations it is time to acknowledge we will not get there under the current proposal,” Coleman said.

The Leviathan project is located on the Rachel and Amit licenses offshore Israel in 5,550 feet of water.  It has an estimated 19 Tcf of discovered natural gas resources.