Canada: Newfoundland offshore sale

LARGELY IGNORED over three decades of exploration in Canadian Atlantic waters, Newfoundland's deep-water Orphan basin has registered its potential. ChevronTexaco, with a 50% stake, and Imperial Oil and ExxonMobil, with 25% each, bid C$0.673bn ($0.52bn) for eight parcels, covering 5.25m acres, for a basin that covers 41,450 square miles, about 30 miles north of the oil-producing Jeanne d'Arc Basin and 240 miles northeast of St John's, Newfoundland. Rated as the largest basin offshore Newfoundland, Orphan has rescued an out-of-favour region, where the industry has gone almost 20 years without a major discovery, spurned annual land sales over the last three years and started abandoning leases,