Iraqi Monthly Export Revenues Up 50% From February’s Seven-Year-Low But Less Than Half 2014 Levels

Algerian Gas Exports Face Rollercoaster Ride In Core Italian Market

...liveries into Italy during 2013 and 2014 due to weaker demand, by maintaining the same oil-indexed gas price formula, this deal ended in December 2015. This was replaced by another agreement with Eni which this time also involved price formula changes, as well as volume reductions. Sonatrach was long re...

Japanese LNG Imports, January-April 2016: Australia Consolidates Top Spot As Qatar Takings Collapse

...PORTS FROM QATAR FELL TO JUST $242MN IN APRIL, LESS THAN A SIXTH OF JANUARY 2014’S RECORD FIGURE ($MN/MONTH)...

Aramco Looks To Build On Record Output With ‘New Era’ Of Integration

...th 2014 – see p18). With the two new refineries targeting export markets, Saudi net products exports soared by 38% to 635,000 b/d according to the Aramco data, which unlike the Jodi data (500,000 b/d for 2015) appears to include field LPG. The Jodi data show gross 2015 products exports of 1....

International Investors Size Up Ambitious Egypt Wind And Solar Program

...newables program, approved by government in September 2014, specifically aimed at securing outside investment (see chart and table). In a recent assessment report for a proposed 1.8GW solar park at Benban, 650km southeast of Cairo, NREA says that the target includes 2GW for wind energy projects, 2GW fo...

Opec: Fit For Purpose? What Purpose Is That Exactly?

...porters on 2 June ahead of the meeting that the recent price rise “has proven that Opec’s strategy since 2014, which was criticized, has been working well and it seems the trend is towards stabilizing markets.” If the price gains since the Doha meeting hadn’t sufficiently dispelled any notion of an ou...

Anti-Hizbollah Banking Sanctions Tear At Lebanon’s Political Fabric

...chel Sulaiman whose term expired in May 2014. The political stalemate has brought decision making to a standstill, with key economic issues not to mention the legal framework for offshore hydrocarbon exploration left unresolved. At the same time political and economic relations between Lebanon and th...

Aramco Sees Gas As Central To Economic Transformation

...ace within its latest Annual Review. Aramco sees gas as an essential “feedstock for diversified industries” and therefore at the heart of Vision 2030. Saudi Arabia has steadily increased the amount of raw gas processed in recent years, from 11mn cfd in 2013, to 11.3mn cfd in 2014 and 11.6mn cfd la...

Egypt Plans Further Cuts To Subsidy Spending

...ypt’s vulnerabilities might increase further over the next 12 months. EGYPT CUTS SPENDING ON ENERGY SUBSIDIES, BUT BY LESS THAN THE FALL IN OIL PRICES (E£ BN) FINANCIAL YEARS ENDING JUNE. *ACTUAL PRICES TO 2014-15. ‘JANUARY 2016’ AND ‘MAY 2016’ USE AVERAGE PRICES FOR THE FINANCIAL YEAR TO 20...

Israel: Road To Gas Development Uncertain Despite Government Push

...ility Edison had previously expressed an interest in purchasing Karish and Tanin (MEES, 5 December 2014), but following Mr Gilo’s ruling the firm cooled its interest until the regulatory uncertainty cleared up. Local reports have indicated that Edison, which also has exploration acreage on the Egyptian si...

Egypt Lays Out Further Subsidy Cuts For 2015-16 But Overall Spending Up

...12-13. The budget for the year beginning 1 July was recently approved by the cabinet but is yet to be signed off by President Sisi. It lays out plans to cut spending on oil product subsidies to E£61bn ($8bn at the latest exchange rate of $1= E£7.63), down 13% from the provisional 2014-15 figure of E£70...

Satorp Taps Riyadh For SR2bn To Reduce Bank Dues

...udi Arabia’s Manifa oilfield (MEES, 15 August 2014). Meanwhile, Sadara Basic Services Company – a subsidiary of the Aramco/Dow petrochemicals joint venture – has agreed a SR865mn ($231mn) mortgage loan to Saudi Butanol Company (Sabuco) to help fund construction of a SR1.9bn ($507mn) butanol pl...

Egypt Goes Import Crazy In Bid To Curb Power Cuts

...intenance between October 2014 and May this year while more than 3.6GW was added to the national grid. This more than meets the estimated power deficit of 2.5GW, according to Mr Yamani (see p8). The budget of state gas firm EGAS to import LNG for the 2015-16 financial year which starts on 1 July will be...

Cyprus Shuts Gas Tender

...s. The tender seeks gas volumes rising from 19.5-30.4 trillion BTU in the first year to 25-43 trillion BTU by 2025. First gas is to be delivered between 1 January 2016 and 30 June 2017, with DEFA thought to favor bids that stipulate an earlier start date (MEES, 18 April 2014). MEES understands th...

Questions Mounting Over GCC Refinery Plans In Wake Of Capacity Hike

...ndensate splitter in the third quarter of 2016. The plant is almost identical to the LR1 splitter which Qatargas built earlier at Ras Laffan and is expected to cost $1.5bn (MEES, 11 April 2014).  GCC REFINERY/SPLITTER PROJECTS SCHEDULE Operator (Project) Lo...

Egypt Power Capacity Boost Gathers Steam

...er the year to June 2014, taking total capacity to 32.02GW. This was almost 6GW above peak recorded consumption of 26.14GW. But demand spiked well above this later in the summer, when outages of both generating capacity and grid infrastructure, coupled with transmission and distribution losses, led to...

Glimmer Of Hope For Oil Markets As Russia-Saudi Ink St Petersburg Deal

...ali. The price negotiations between Saudi Aramco and Lukoil have been ongoing since the Russian upstream player announced the discovery in 2006. Lukoil said in 2013 that it hoped to start producing gas from Block A in 2014. Company vice president Leonid Fedun said in late 2012 that the 14 tcf Rub’ al...

Syria’s Economy: Down, Down, But Not Quite Out

...rian Center for Policy Research using patchy publicly-available data on the Syrian economy – data that includes company filings and trade statistics for neighboring Turkey – indicates an even larger contraction of 62% between 2010 and 2014. The largest losses, of 30.9% and 36.5% respectively were in 20...

QP To Downsize Foreign Staff In Reorganization Plan

...0,000 b/d for 2014, and to an average of 660,000 b/d for the first five months of 2015. Some large investment projects should help to stabilize oil production, such as the $4bn plans to update facilities and increase production at Bul Hanine from 40,000 b/d to 95,000 b/d by 2028 (MEES, 8 May). As for ga...

Qatar Stares Deficit In The Face

...mpares with previous forecasts in December 2014 of 7.7% and 7.5% respectively. The latest forecasts are broadly in line with the IMF’s latest forecasts of 7.1% for 2015 and 6.5% for 2016 contained in the latest update to the fund’s MENA Regional Economic Outlook, released last month.  If spending is ke...