Aramco to float 25pc of refinery
EDINBURGH: Saudi Aramco said it would float 25 per cent to 30 per cent of an $8.5 billion refinery it is setting up in partnership with Japan's Sumitomo Chemical Company.
'Down the line, it will be floated – 25-30 per cent. When the project is operational it will be floated,' Aramco's business development director, Samih Al Muhaizeem, said during a trade seminar in Britain.
The refinery and petrochemical project at Rabegh on the Red Sea is due to start operations in the second half of 2008.
$400m drilling deals
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian energy services firm Scomi Group said it has won five contracts worth about $400 million to supply drilling fluids and equipment for exploration work in Malaysia.
The contracts were awarded separately by Sarawak Shell Bhd/Sabah Shell Petroleum, Nippon Oil Exploration (Malaysia) Ltd, Petronas Carigali, ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Malaysia.
PTTEP wins rights
BANGKOK: Thailand's PTT Exploration and Production said the Thai cabinet had approved the awarding of offshore exploration rights for two blocks in the Gulf of Thailand.
The decision, made at a cabinet meeting, gave the company rights to explore Block G9/48 and Block G12/48 off the coast of Songkhla province, PTTEP said in a statement.
Libya woos majors
TRIPOLI: Libya may hold its third oil and gas licensing round in March after two previous rounds drew stiff competition from global oil majors, the country's state-run National Oil Corp (NOC) said.
KPC to start naphtha talks
SINGAPORE: Middle East Gulf producer Kuwait Petroleum Corp will start negotiations with its Asian customers on February 13 to renew annual naphtha term contracts starting this April.
The discussions will be held from February 13 to 17 in Singapore, one of its Asian buyers said.
PTT raises prices
BANGKOK: Thailand's oil and gas conglomerate PTT said it had raised the retail prices of all its refined oil products by THB0.40 a litre.
The price increase is due mainly to higher crude oil and refined oil prices in the global market, Apisith Rujikeatkamjorn, PTT's senior executive vice- president, said.
Petron tender
MANILA: The Philippines' Petron awar-ded a sell tender for a 3,000mt mixed xylenes cargo to be loaded in the second half of February at around $730-740/mt FOB Bataan, sources said.
13 firms eye Syria assets
DAMASCUS: Syria is examining 23 oil and gas exploration offers from 13 foreign companies that responded to a call for bids last April, Oil Minister Ibrahim Haddad said.
PetroCanada submitted six offers, the highest number among bidders, to explore six of the nine blocks available for exploration. The company announced recently it will sell its existing Syria assets for $676 million to state-run companies in China and India.
Royal Dutch Shell submitted two offers to explore blocks in the east and south of Syria.
Production starts
OSLO: Oil and gas production has resumed at the Aasgard B platform and its adjacent installation Mikkel in the Norwegian Sea, which were closed due to sparks and smoke in an exhaust system, operator Statoil said.
'Production resumed on the Aasgard B platform in the Norwegian Sea in the early hours of Friday 20 January. The Statoil-operated Mikkel field is also producing again,' the company said in a statement.
Production was nearly at 50 per cent of normal output and would gradually return to normal, a company spokesman said.
$338m rig contract
SINGAPORE: Singapore's Keppel FELS said it had secured a $338-million contract to build an ultra-deep-water oil rig for Texas-based offshore oil and gas drilling contractor ENSCO.
The semi-submersible rig is scheduled for delivery in 2009. It was the second ENSCO order in four months for the Singapore company.
Both rigs are capable of drilling in water depths of up to 2,600 metres and can be upgraded to 10,000 feet if required, Keppel FELS said in a statement.
BG work hit
LONDON: Bad weather has forced operator BG Group to cut crude oil output at its giant Karachaganak oilfield in Kazakhstan, a BG spokeswoman said.
'Unseasonably harsh weather has meant we have temporarily suspended gas injection activities there, which has subsequently impacted some liquids production,' said a BG spokeswoman.
Belarus unit upgrade set
LONDON: Belarus's 239,000-barrels-per-day Naftan oil refinery is starting an upgrading plan this year to boost crude throughput by about a third and reduce output of low-value fuel oil, a plant official said.
The refinery, which processed around 9.5 million tonnes (190,000 bpd) of crude in 2004, plans to increase throughput to 12 million tonnes a year during the upgrade, due to end in 2008.
Korea demand up
SINGAPORE: South Korea's oil product demand last year grew a mere 1.2 per cent from a year earlier to 761.41 million barrels, or 2.09 million barrels a day, data released by Korea National Oil Corp showed.
The relatively low growth rate is largely in line with South Korean forecasters' expectations, as power generators' shift from oil to coal and natural gas will limit demand growth in the near term.
New Pertamina offer
SINGAPORE: Indonesia's state oil firm Pertamina has awarded its February jet fuel import tender to its trading affiliate Petral and oil major Shell, trading sources said.
But the status of the gas oil portion sought in the tender was unclear.
Pertamina will buy a 120,000-barrel lot of jet fuel each from the two suppliers at around parity to Singapore spot quotes, on a free-on-board (FOB) Singapore basis, they said.
$2.5bn financing
ISTANBUL: Turkey's KOC Holding said it had agreed $2.5 billion credit financing for the purchase of oil refiner Tupras.
Koc said the financing would come from three consortiums and involve different term dates.
The term dates range from 732 days to seven years, and they will be used for rolling over KOC's existing debts and for making payments to thePrivatisation Adminis-tration for the purchase of Tupras, the statement said.
VDU restarts
TAIPEI: Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical Corporation has restarted a vacuum distillation unit (VDU), after shutting down the 80,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) unit for nearly a month due to repair works, company sources said.
Formosa closed the VDU on December 27.
Kuwait disputes reserves claim
KUWAIT CITY: A senior Kuwaiti oil official has cast doubt on the accuracy of a report by industry newsletter Petroleum Intelligence Weekly (PIW) that the Opec producer's oil reserves are only half those officially stated.
'I have no idea where they got this figure from ... I don't think it's accurate,' Farouk Al Zanki, the chairman of state-run Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) said in Kuwait City.
PIW earlier said that according to internal Kuwait records the newsletter saw, Kuwait's actual oil reserves, which are officially stated at around 99 billion barrels, or close to 10 per cent of the global total, are a good deal lower.
Zamil in $133m deal
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Al Zamil Group and the US-based Huntsman Corporation have signed a joint venture shareholders agreement for setting up an SR500 million ($133.3 million) world-class ethyleneamines manufacturing facility in Jubail.
The plant will have a production capacity of 30,000 tonnes of ethylenediamine (EDA) diethylenetriamine (DETA), triethylenetetramine (TETA) and higher molecular weight versions, such as TEPA, E-100, AEP and piperazine.
Kiyane stake move
RIYADH: Saudi Basic Industries Corpoartion (Sabic) is mulling the purchase of a stake in Kiyane petrochemical firm, which is expected to go public this year, market and company sources said.
Sabic, the Saudi bourse's largest-capitalised stock, said in a statement it would make a decision on a possible partnership with the Jubail-based firm within two months.
PIC to ink key deal
KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) is to sign a $1.3-billion contract with Korea's SK Engineering and Construction Company and Italy's engineering firm Tecnimont to build a 1.9-milion metric tonne aromatics plant, PIC chairman Saad Al Shuwaib said.
Quick takes
Vopak eyes LNG projects
THE HAGUE: Dutch storage company Vopak wants to develop liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in the Far East and Latin America and hopes to have a new project in the pipeline in the next two years, a senior official said.
Dirk van Slooten, managing director of Vopak LNG projects, said that Vopak's next LNG project was most likely to be in the Far East in countries like China, Pakistan, Thailand, Singapore or others.
'We're very much interested in being involved in other initiatives in the world, specifically in the Far East,' van Slooten said.
'We are also looking at Latin America, most likely the biggest countries -- Brazil, Argentina, also Mexico, and Chile as well'.
Italy plans for gas crunch
ROME: Italy's government has drafted a bill to allow utilities to use more fuel oil for electricity as the country seeks to offset a drop in gas supplies from Russia, a source present at an energy meeting said.
The country could face power problems in February and March if the current cold weather continues and Russian supplies remain a problem, Paolo Scaroni, head of Italy's biggest oil and gas firm Eni said.
Industry Minister Claudio Scajola met top executives of Eni and utilities Enel and Edison recently to discuss energy alternatives as Russia cuts exports due to extreme cold weather at home.
Batumi ups oil shipments
TBILISI: Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi boosted crude and refined products shipments last year due to new volumes of Azeri crude, including from ExxonMobil.
A terminal source said volumes rose to 9.699 million tonnes last year from 6.732 million tonnes in 2004. In December alone, crude oil shipments stood at 681,485 tonnes, down from 847,040 tonnes in November 2005.
Total shipments of oil and refined products rose to 938,344 tonnes in December 2005 from 591,011 tonnes in December 2004.
PGNiG reduces supplies
WARSAW: Polish gas group PGNiG will reduce supplies to industrial users as a cold snap has sent residential usage soaring, the company said.
'PGNiG will reduce supplies to the five largest industrial users -- nitrogen producers and (fuels group) PKN Orlen. Such reductions are foreseen in our commercial contracts,' PGNiG said in a statement.
ENVIRONMENTAL EYE
New clean fuel rules bolster Caltex sales
SYDNEY: Australian petroleum imports are likely to rise through the first quarter as Caltex Australia imports higher volumes to meet a shortfall of products complying with new clean fuel regulations.
'As we said in previous guidance there are extra imports to meet clean fuels deadlines but we have not revealed how much or where these imports have come from as that is commercially sensitive information,' a company spokesman said.
Rival refiner Exxon Mobil has noted an increase in imports to the terminals it operates in eastern Australia, which it attributes to extra fuel it is handling on behalf of Caltex.
Caltex, half-owned by US-based Chevron, recently applied for a second extension to a government deadline as it could not comply with a January 1 cut-off for upgrades due to late deliveries of materials, equipment and reactors.
The new clean fuel rules will bring Australia into line with standards in Europe and include a requirement for a maximum 50 parts per million of sulphur (0.005 per cent) in diesel and a maximum 1 per cent benzene in petrol.
Caltex, which operates two refineries representing 30 per cent of Australian capacity, says it expects benzene-reduction plants at both sites to be onstream during the first quarter.
The sulphur-reduction plant at its 105,500 barrel-per-day (bpd) capacity Lytton refinery near Brisbane in Queensland is also due on-line in the first quarter. A matching unit at the 124,500 bpd-capacity Kurnell refinery in Sydney is expected 'around the end of the first quarter', the spokesman said.
Exxon, Shell and BP all said the balance between their locally refined and imported products had not changed as they had upgraded their facilities ahead of this month's deadline, although they saw an increasing volume of imports due to rising demand for fuel.
Australia, one of Asia Pacific's largest crude oil producers, has become a growing fuel importer due to a widening gap between its roughly 750,000 bpd of refining capacity and oil consumption that has topped 900,000 bpd, US government estimates showed.