KRG Helping Hand To Kirkuk Province Threatens To Widen Rift With Baghdad

...ys is housing half a million Iraqis and refugees displaced as a result of the jihadist incursion into Iraq in June 2014. He said in an interview with Kurdish Rudaw television that Kirkuk had not received its share of the federal budget for six months and has not been paid for its oil in two ye...

Dana Gas, KRG Cross Swords

...the fields, will be heard in early 2016. Meanwhile, Dana Gas says, the KRG still remains in default of the Arbitral Tribunal’s Peremptory Order of October 2014 to pay the consortium $100mn on an interim basis, forcing the consortium to seek English Court enforcement of this order, it says. A he...

Sabic Taps Korean Tech

...ES, 20 June 2014). The Korean plant produces linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE), polyolefin plastomers and polyolefin elastomers using metallocene catalysts. Sabic sees growing demand for these materials in the flexible packaging, industrial and agricultural films, automotive, footwear, me...

Kuwait Posts First Deficit In 15 Years

...KUWAIT Kuwait Posts First Deficit In 15 Years For the first time since 1999-2000, Kuwait has posted an “actual” budget deficit. The KD2.31bn ($8.0bn) deficit for fiscal year 2014-15 after transfers to state reserves is almost entirely due to the $22/B fall to $81/B in the average pr...

Egypt Squeezes Spending In Bid To Tame Deficit

...P for the 2014-15 financial year that ended on 30 June; for 2013-14 it was almost 13% (see graph). The revised budget now projects a deficit of E£251bn ($32.4bn), down from E£261bn in the earlier draft, with spending of E£864.5bn trimmed by E£20bn, with half of the cuts coming from the salaries bu...

Iran’s Oil And Gas Sector: The Post-Sanctions Opportunities

...tural gas from the country may find this approach rewarding. Iran’s gas production can easily increase considerably. According to BP’s latest Statistical Review of World Energy, Iran’s gas reserves at end-2014 were nearly 3.5 times that of the US, while its gas production in 2014 was less than one qu...

Benchmark Crude Prices ($/B)

...15 2014 2013 2012 WTI 52.78 57.44 60.20 59.86 59.43 58.02 53...

Sisi Risks Price Reform To Boost Energy Sector

...is expenditure by about a third, saving $6bn in over the 2014-2015 fiscal year that began on 1 July. Reducing the cost of energy not only slims the budget deficit, a vital step to balance battered state finances. It also frees up funds for Egypt’s upstream sector, where chronic underinvestment has di...

Algeria Says Output Will Rise 15% By 2018.

...stream, according to the state giant’s 2014-18 Medium Term Development Plan, state news agency APS says. These gross numbers are misleading as they include gas which is subsequently re-injected, but the direction of the official Algerian projections clearly differs from the forecasts in the In...

Iran To Sideline Sinopec At Yadavaran

...yer of Iranian crude taking 650,000 b/d for Jan-May 2014....

MENA Active Drilling Rigs, June 2014*

Kuwait Clarifies Al-Zour Plans, Iraq Projects Halted

...tes Aramco/Total (Satorp) Jubail, S Arabia 400 2014 First CDU start-up 3Q13, second imminent. Aramco/Sinopec (Yasref) Yanbu’, S Arabia 40...

Iraqi Oil Output Seen Stagnating

...IRAQ The US government’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) has cut estimates of Iraqi oil output growth in 2014 and 2015 in its latest short term energy outlook. Although operations in Iraq’s southern oil hub have so far been spared from rapid jihadist advances, the EIA sees production st...

Yemen Oil Revenues Tumble Amid Violence

...YEMEN Yemen’s oil export revenue for the first five months of 2014 was a mere $671mn, down close to 40% on the same period last year. San’a typically relies on oil export revenues to finance up to 60% of its budget. Given average international prices of $110/B Yemen’s Masila Blend cr...

Egypt Takes The Plunge And Raises Energy Prices

...EGYPT The Egyptian government has taken the long-awaited painful but necessary decision of raising domestic energy prices. Energy subsidies in the 2014-15 budget starting on 1 July are estimated at E£127bn ($17.7bn), or 16% of the budget – E£100bn ($14.0bn) for petroleum products an...

Cyprus: IMF Calls For Banks, Energy Restructuring

...ansfers outside Cyprus without prior authorization. Ratings agency Fitch predicts that the “removal of the remaining capital controls is unlikely to be fully implemented before the end of 2014.” Fitch on 4 July upgraded its “long-term issuer default ratings” on Cyprus’ two largest banks, Bank of Cy...

IMF: Real Estate Drives UAE Growth, Overheating Risk Remains

...debted GREs, noting that Dubai’s total government and GRE debt is estimated at $142bn (141% of Dubai GDP), with $92bn falling due in 2014-19. With the relaxation of rent controls, rising real estate prices may also feed into inflation. The IMF welcomed recent measures taken by Dubai to discourage sp...

Chinese Crude Imports, January-May 2014 (‘000 B/D)

Benchmark Crude Prices ($/B)

...OIL PRICES   10 Jul 30 Jun-4 Jul 23-27 Jun Jun-14 May-14 Q2 2014 Q1 2014 2013 20...

Oman Oil Marketing Plans Duqm Bunkering.

...ncluded sometime in 2014.   Duqm, a special economic zone receiving heavy oil and gas sector investment, is located roughly halfway between Salalah and Musqat on the Arabian Sea coast. OOMCO has been serving bunker fuel needs at Oman’s Sohar Industrial Port since 2010 in partnership with Germany’s Ma...