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...

Sanctions Aside, Iran Left With Plenty To Do Ahead Of Upstream Opening

...ercome most, if not all, of the buyback’s shortcomings (MEES, 19 June). WORLD GAS RESERVES BY COUNTRY (TCM)   2014 % of total 2010 2000 Iran 34...

Algeria’s Energy Thirst Appears Unquenchable - And Unsustainable

...ns in 1H 2014 (MEES, 12 December 2014). With the completion of Sorfert, Algeria’s total nameplate fertilizers and methanol capacity is around 3.94mn t/y (MEES, 19 December 2014). Gas requirements from fertilizer plants are expected to grow further this year. Sonatrach’s Al Djazairia Al Omania Li...

Petroceltic Struggles To Bridge Funding Gap

...the start of the year. The firm now forecasts 14,000-15,000 boe/d for 2015, well below not only 2014’s 22,500 boe/d, but also its January’s previous 16,600-18,500 boe/d 2015 forecast (see table). Egypt, where the 2015 output forecast has been slashed by 3,000 boe/d since January, accounts for 85% of...

Erbil-Baghdad Deal Teeters As KRG Cuts Oil Supply To Somo, Plans Bonds

...had increased independent oil sales due to what it said in a statement was “the significant debt backlog" arising from the budget cuts of 2014 imposed by the federal government and the need to pay down debts accumulated in 2014 from prepayments for oil sales. The region's financial difficulties, it...

Egypt Hopes To Attract IOCs To Its Western Mediterranean Waters

...elds, leading to a decline in the gas production rate and an inability to connect compensatory wells.” The ministry had expected gas output to hit 5.4bn cfd during the July 2014-June 2015 fiscal year. But output for the first nine months (ie to April 2015) averaged just 4.57bn cfd. According to th...

Opec Data Charts Saudi Refining Surge, But Plans Are Slipping

...REGIONAL Opec Data Charts Saudi Refining Surge, But Plans Are Slipping Opec’s eight Mena members added 6.7% to their combined crude distillation unit (CDU) capacity in 2014, according to the organization’s Annual Statistic Bulletin 2015. Most held capacity steady, with only Saudi Ar...

Egypt Adds To Solar Plans, Looks To Fund Massive Power Expansion

...ril, down from 4.72bn for 2014 (see p8). Until it can revive upstream activity, the government has turned to LNG imports. EGAS recently began taking deliveries through a 550mn cfd capacity floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) moored at Ain Sukhna. A second FSRU of 500-700mn cfd capacity is...

US Petroleum 2Q 2015 Imports, Exports, Demand (‘000 B/D)

...15 4Q14 3Q14 2Q14 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 CRUDE OIL IMPORTS 7,020 6,...

Middle Eastern NOCs Look To Make Sense Of A Low Oil Price World

...developing infrastructure, especially in the downstream sector, including investing in three new refineries, with much of the materials procured locally, it adds. It cites Saudi Aramco’s 2014 Annual Review saying that between 2010 and 2014 a total of $143bn was spent on procuring services and ma...

Oman Budget Deficit Soars For 2014, Could Quadruple This Year

...OMAN Oman Budget Deficit Soars For 2014, Could Quadruple This Year Oman has posted a budget deficit of $2.75bn, 3.4% of GDP, for 2014, up more than 11-fold on 2013. With oil prices so far this year averaging $18/B below the $75/B on which the 2015 budget is based, the deficit could ba...

Jordan Taps Bond Market, But Syria Conflict Weighs

...arantee principal and interest on Jordanian sovereign bonds. The first was inked in 2013 for a bond of up to $1.25bn, the second in 2014 for up to $1bn, and the third in 2015 for up to $1.5bn (MEES, 5 June). When the third agreement was signed, the US said the guarantee is part of a broader US commitment to...

Saudi Savings Fall

...ril and $66bn (9%) from their August 2014 peak of $746bn. With the kingdom’s (and Opec’s) policy of maximizing market share rather than cutting output to support prices, Saudi Arabia’s oil revenue is likely to remain at relatively-subdued levels for some time to come.  And while the Saudi go...

Iran’s Oil Production Boost Scenarios In A Post-Sanctions Era

...ss energy and boosting efficiency, while in the EU there is economic stagnation. Globally, there is an oversupply in the oil market, which contributed to oil prices plummeting in 2014. This downward trend created huge uncertainty and speculation in the market. The sharp oil price fall in 2014, du...

Benchmark Crude Prices ($/B)

...15 2014 2013 2012 WTI 56.93 60.20 59.89 59.86 59.43 58.02 53...

Syria: Output At 17KB/D

...SYRIA Crude oil production from government-controlled areas of Syria has averaged 17,000 b/d in the first half of 2014, or 4.4% of pre-war volumes of 385,000 b/d, the country’s Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Sulaiman al-‘Abbas said this week. This, according to government st...

Falling Oil & Gas Exports Hit Algeria’s Trade Surplus

...ALGERIA Algeria’s trade surplus fell by 19.4% to $3.9bn in the first half of 2014, from $4.84bn in the corresponding period of 2013, latest official customs statistics show. This comes on the back of a 2.2% fall in the value of hydrocarbon exports to $32.23bn in the first six months of th...

Suez Canal Traffic, 2Q 2014 (‘000t)