CAPITAL: Bandar Seri Begawan

MONETARY UNIT: Dollar

REFINING CAPACITY: 8,600 b/cd

OIL PRODUCTION: 145,000 b/d

OIL RESERVES: 1.35 million b/d

GAS RESERVES: 14.1 tcf

Brunei in 1997 was reported to be considering steps to revive exploration by foreign companies.

The small but hydrocarbon-rich country on northwestern Borneo produced from 12 fields in 1997, all of them operated by Brunei Shell Petroleum Co. Sdn. Bhd.

Also, an Elf Aquitaine unit was developing Maharaja Lela-Jamalul Alam field straddling the Sabah border, discovered in 1989.

Wood Mackenzie Consultants Ltd., Edinburgh, Scotland, said the government had been rumored to be considering introduction of a licensing system based on a production sharing contract.

Brunei Shell`s roots in Brunei date to activity by an antecedent company, Anglo Saxon Petroleum Co., which made the country`s first, though noncommercial, discovery in 1914. The company found Seria oil field in 1929 and made no further discoveries until the 1960s and 1970s, including the most important of which are Southwest Ampa and Champion, each, like Seria, holding nearly 1 billion bbl of oil equivalent reserves.

Discoveries during the 1990s were based on 3D seismic data and interpretation. They included Peragam gas field below Champion oil field in 1990, Bugan gas field in 1993, and Selangkir gas field in 1995.

In downstream action, Kanematsu of Japan and Taiwan`s Chinese Petroleum Corp. were studying feasibility of building a $1 billion refinery and petrochemical complex in Brunei with crude distillation capacity of 60,000 b/d of crude and production capacities of 420,00 metric tons/year of paraxylene and 200,000 tons/year of benzene.