S&P Downgrades GCC Ratings On Back Of Tumbling Oil Prices

...hrain’s public finances. S&P highlights that public spending has remained elevated since the outbreak of mass civil unrest in 2011, with wages, salaries and subsidies accounting for 72% of spending. Despite Bahrain’s financial woes, however, the agency believes that economic support from neighboring Saudi Ar...

Iran Sets Out FDI Strategy As Foreign Cash Starts To Trickle In

...lay is that Mr Rohani waited for the lifting of international sanctions against Iran on 16 January to unveil the 2016-17 budget the next day (MEES, 22 January).   The budget projects oil revenue at $22bn, based on an oil price assumption of $35-40/B; oil revenue hit a record $119bn in 2011 wh...

Iran Eyes Growing Gas Shipments To Armenia, Turkey

...at Armenia would be able to transfer 0.5 bcm/year of Iranian gas to Georgia. BREAKTHROUGH ON TURKISH PRICING? Iranian and Turkish officials said on 2 February that the International Court of Arbitration had ruled that Iran should cut the cost of gas exports to Turkey backdated to 2011. Turkey ha...

Algeria Reaches Critical Crossroads

...e Arab Spring that started in 2011. The government responded to local protests through more spending via food and fuel subsidies, salaries increases for public jobs and housing and health assistance, at a time when oil prices were comfortably sitting above $100/B. But it is now paying dear for a fa...

The $100bn-Plus Cost Of Syria’s Civil War

...bn. This is almost as large as Syria’s pre-war GDP, the Bank notes in its latest Mena Quarterly Economic Brief. In addition, damage caused by the war to the “capital stock” in Syria between 2011 and 2014 was estimated at $72bn, the World Bank said, quoting a report by the local Syria Center for Po...

Ministry Claims $60bn Oil Sector Losses

...Syrian oil minister Sulaiman al-Abbas says that the country’s oil and gas sector has suffered “direct and indirect” losses of $60.4bn between 2011 and end-2015. The minister said that oil production from government-controlled areas averaged 9,500 b/d in 2015, just 2.5% of the pre-civil wa...

Iran’s Oil* Exports By Destination (‘000 B/D): Volumes Edge Up In January But Still 1.3mn B/D Down On 2011 Levels

East Asian Importers Take Less LNG In 2015; Little Sign Of An Upturn In 2016

...pply coming onstream, from Australia and the US in particular, means that for Middle East producers, starting with Qatar, the competition is becoming increasingly palpable. JAPAN: NUCLEAR RESTARTS Japan notched up three straight years of record 87mn tons-plus LNG imports following 2011’s Fu...

Dubai Plans $27bn Green Power Fund, But Considering Expanded Coal Program

...bsidized. The UAE has recently hiked the costs of transport fuels, by linking gasoline and diesel prices to international prices (see p13). However, DEWA has operated a fuel surcharge for electricity and water customers since January 2011, which is adjusted on a monthly basis. DEWA charges consumers a mi...

Iran Taps SWF For $4.8Bn Oil Project Funds

...st one quarter of what it earned in the year starting March 2011, before international sanctions limiting its oil exports came into effect. Including its gifts of crude oil to Syria – estimated at between 50,000 b/d and 70,000 b/d (see p21) – Iran’s crude oil and condensate exports averaged 1....

Options Narrow As Libya Peace Talks Collapse

...ters to prevent the delivery of weapons to Islamic radicals, and both Libya and Egypt requested that an arms embargo imposed on Libya in 2011 be lifted. Neither request was granted. ARAB INTERVENTION FORCE? Mr Sisi has also called for the creation of a joint Arab military force, and claims that Jo...

Qatar Looks To Adapt Amid Shifting Global LNG Landscape

...rst LNG importer in 2011, with Qatar providing most of the LNG volumes. Qatargas delivered 27 spot cargoes to the 5mn t/y Map Ta Phut LNG receiving terminal which is able to accommodate the giant Qatari Q-Flex vessels. With plans to double the facility’s capacity to 10mn t/y, it will be able to re...

Saudi Arabia 2014 Official Crude & Oil Products Output, Trade & Balance (‘000 B/D)

...Saudi Arabia 2014 Official Crude & Oil Products Output, Trade & Balance (‘000 B/D)     2014 14vs13 2013 2012 2011 2010 De...

MENA Nuclear Program Expanding, But Some Preliminary Schedules Sliding

...rrors the 1992 agreement under which Bushehr-1 was completed in 2011. The difference is that Iran will provide fuel rods, rather than Rosatom as in the original deal. This could prove controversial as Tehran and international governments negotiate to end sanctions, which were imposed because of concerns th...

Warring South Sudan Factions In Last-Chance Saloon

...0,000 b/d it was producing on average over the second half of last year, but still some 30% below pre-conflict production, and around 51% less than what it was producing in the second half of 2011, immediately after independence from Sudan. And with the country’s oil fields central to the ongoing co...

Gulf Keystone ‘For Sale’ Amid Kurdish Cash-Flow Woes

...LLIONS IN DEBT PILING UP DNO’s Executive Director Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani said in December at a London conference that the Norwegian independent alone was owed more than $1bn by the KRG while debts to Dana Gas, part of the Pearl Consortium developing the Khor Mor gas field, which began producing in 2011...

Syria’s Economic Hardships Intensify With Fuel Shortage

...ude production from the government-controlled areas slumped to 9,325 b/d in 2014, or a mere 2.4% of 385,000 b/d output before the start of uprising in March 2011. Syria’s imports of crude oil in the first nine months of 2014 were estimated at 124,600 b/d, according to The Syria Report. The tiny oi...

Lebanon Launches ‘Largest Ever’ $2.2Bn Eurobond

...oblems, Lebanon finds itself in the eye of the Middle East storm, as it struggles to cope with the influx of some 1.6mn Syrian refugees (both official and unofficial), who have fled their war-torn country since the start of the uprising in early 2011. Yet despite these external shocks, which slowed GD...

Algeria: Mixed Shale Signals Highlight Deeper Economic, Political Disarray

...mands specific to the southern Algerian and Sahara regions. But this is likely to resonate among the overall population,” Ms Jacobs says. REVENUES DOWN, STABILITY THREAT          In the wake of upheavals in the Arab world since 2011, Algeria has managed to maintain a certain level of social st...

ENI Sanguine On Libya

...om Italian pipeline operator Snam Rete appear to support his bullishness. These show volumes of over 700mn cfd so far this month, higher than the average for 2014, or indeed any year since the 2011 ouster of Colonel Qadhafi. LIBYA GAS EXPORTS TO ITALY (MN CFD)...