Middle East Energy Report
Bahrain
Chevron Lummus Global of the US was awarded an engineering services contract in early August for a new 400,000 b/d lube base-oil refinery being developed by Bahrain Petroleum and Finland’s Neste Oil. Samsung Engineering is the main contractor on the project.
Iran
National Iranian Drilling (NIDC) has invited bids by a 23 September deadline for a well-completion services contract covering phases 17-18 of the South Pars gas field development. NIDC plans to drill 27 wells on the field. State-owned Pars Oil and Gas has also invited bids for a contract to gather 3-D seismic data for the Golshan and Ferdos gasfields in the south.
Oil minister Gholamhossein Nozari is unlikely to be reappointed to the job after a presidential advisory committee excluded him from a shortlist of candidates in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s new cabinet. The committee has proposed the managing director of National Iranian Oil Company, Seifollah Jashnsaz, and industry and mines minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian as candidates to replace Nozari, official news agency IRNA reported last month.
Iraq
Gulf Keystone Petroleum has made a “significant” discovery at the Shaikan-1 exploration well in the Kurdistan region. The well, which lies in the Shaikan Block, near Duhok, hit oil in the Sargelu formation. Preliminary test rates signalled a flow of 5,000-8,000 b/d. It said the oil properties for this section are comparable to the oil now being produced at the Tawke field, to the northwest of the block.
State-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) aims to raise its stake in the Rumaila oilfield, won in a joint bid with BP in June. According to Xinhua news agency, CNPC’s president, Jiang Jiemin, will renegotiate with BP the size of their respective stakes; at present, BP holds 50% and the Chinese group 25%. A deal is likely to be completed in October.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is to take a 17% stake in Heritage Oil, which holds blocks in the region. On 4 August, UK-listed Heritage announced it would issue 286.3m shares to acquire the entire share capital of Turkish Genel Enerji, which also holds acreage in Kurdistan.
State-owned North Oil Company expects to raise production by 75,0000 b/d at the Kirkuk field by the end of 2010. At present, its output amounts to 0.65m b/d. The country is also investing $150m in the Bai Hassan field, subject to a dispute between the oil ministry and the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. The investment will fund new equipment to boost production by around 173,000 b/d to 230,000 b/d by the end of next year.
The oil ministry will develop the Akkas and Mansuriyah gasfields on its own, after its 30 June licensing round failed to award the two fields. Indian company BGR Energy has been awarded an $80.5m contract to supply materials for the fields.
Israel
Local explorer Yam Thetis has signed a deal to supply a further 5bn cm of gas to state-owned utility Israel Electric for $1bn over the next five years. Yam Thetis produces gas from an offshore field on the southern Mediterranean coast, in a consortium that also includes Noble Energy and Delek Group units Delek Drilling and Avner Oil Exploration.
Oman
Oil production increased by 6.9% in the first five months of 2009 compared with the same period of the previous year, reaching 0.79m b/d. Oman is targeting an increase to 0.8m b/d this year, from 0.76m b/d in 2008. However, oil-export revenues for the first five months fell by 47% to $5.35bn.
Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) is planning to treble production at the Amal oilfields in the southeast through the use of steam-injection technology. It will boost production at Amal East and Amal West by drilling 300 new wells over a 14-year period. The first phase of the development is due to be completed by 2012.
Qatar
Qatar Petroleum (QP) awarded a feasibility study contract in August to Japan’s JGC for the expansion of its condensate refinery at Ras Laffan. The refinery’s capacity will be doubled to 292,000 b/d. Construction is due to start in 2011 with a 2014 completion deadline.
China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) will receive its debut LNG cargo under a long-term contract with Qatargas next month. The contract is set to reduce demand for spot cargos at China’s Guangdong Dapeng receiving terminal in Shenzhen province.
Oil and gas production capacity should reach 5m boe/d by 2014 when planned energy-expansion projects are completed, Qatar News Agency (QNA) quoted a senior official as saying. That would represent a significant increase on the 2008 average of 2.8m boe/d. Qatar expects to produce 12m tonnes of propane and butane a year by 2014, with total petrochemicals production to reach 4.3m t/y by 2015, Saad al-Kaabi, Qatar Petroleum’s director of oil and gas projects, told the state news agency.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Aramco has revised the scope of two large gas plants ahead of the first tender for the projects. The company has raised the proposed capacity of its Arabiyah plant in the Eastern Province from 1bn cf/d to 1.2bn cf/d. Capacity at the Shaybah plant in the Empty Quarter has been raised increased from 1.4bn cf/d to 1.5bn cf/d.
Saudi Aramco is planning a new energy park in Dammam, built on 1.5m square km of land in Eastern Province. The park will house manufacturing, workshop and material-storage facilities, targeting oil and gas services firms and power-generation companies.
Saudi Aramco invited bids in August for the construction of a new-build jack-up rig, with a contract award due by end-2009, for delivery in 2011 or 2012. The rig will be equipped with larger deck space than the standard jack-up.
UAE
Dubai’s state-owned Dragon Oil said in August it is likely to miss its production-growth target in 2009 because of technical problems. Dragon also said net profit fell by 37%, to $105m, in the first six months of 2009.
Abu Dhabi’s Dolphin Energy says it will finish building a cross-country pipeline to pump gas from Qatar to the east coast of the UAE in the third quarter of 2010. The new gas pipeline would allow Dolphin to pump gas 240 km to Fujairah, on the UAE’s east coast, from Abu Dhabi’s Taweelah plant. Russia’s Stroytransgaz won the $418m contract to build the Fujairah-Taweelah pipeline in July 2008.
Yemen
The total value of oil exports amounted to $0.664bn during the first half of 2009, a decrease of 75% from the $2.7bn the country earned between January and June 2008, according to the Central Bank of Yemen. The government’s share of all the oil produced in the first six months of the year, at 25.4m barrels, was down by 27% from the same period of 2008.
Tags: Ali Akbar, BGR Energy, Chevron Lummus Global, CNPC, Delek Group, energy, IRNA, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, NIDC, Noble Energ, North Oil Company, power, Samsung Engineering, Technology, turkish