Middle East Adjusts To Trump’s Foreign Aid Game

...nual hike to the already sizable assistance the US provides to Amman. Jordan is the most aid-dependent country in the Middle East, with foreign grants comprising about 10% of budgeted revenues this year (MEES, 1 December 2017), and the US is Jordan’s single biggest donor. Israel, the region’s se...

Growing Saudi’s Non-Oil Economy: A Mirage In The Desert?

...tervention Centre, which is working on the revamp, overall implementation of the NTP is still planned for 2020 but some targets will be pushed back to 2025 and 2030. Completion of the revamped NTP known as “NTP 2.0” was scheduled for the end of October 2017 according to the same document but has yet to ma...

Spain 2017 Gas Imports (Bcm)*: Algeria Down 9% At 16.9bcm, Below 50% Of Total For First Time In 5 Years

...*ORIGINAL DATA IN GWH. CONVERTED AT 1GWH =90,000m³ (STANDARD IEA CONVERSION FOR SPAIN DATA). ^CHANGES EXPRESSED ON A PERCENTAGE POINTS BASIS. SOURCE: CORES, IEA, MEES CALCULATIONS.   SPANISH GAS IMPORTS FROM ALGERIA (BCM): STILL THE DOMINANT SUPPLIER BUT VOLUMES, AT 16.9BCM FOR 2017...

Italy 2017 Crude Imports ('000 B/D): Iran More Than Triples Volumes To 7-Year High, Kuwait Supplies Record 73,000 B/D (And 100,000 B/D For Q4), Libya Rebounds To 4-Year-High, Mideast Supplies Record 41.3%

...*CHANGES EXPRESSED ON A PERCENTAGE POINT BASIS. SOURCE: ITALY CUSTOMS DATA, MEES CALCULATIONS.   ITALY’S TOP 8 CRUDE SUPPLIERS ('000 B/D): RESURGENT IRAN FALLS JUST SHORT OF AZERBAIJAN AS #1 SUPPLIER WITH 7-YEAR HIGH OF 352,000 B/D IN NOV 2017   ITALY CRUDE IMPORTS BY...

Turkey 2017 Crude Imports ('000 B/D): Iran Takes Top Spot With Record Volumes

...*PERCENTAGE CHANGE EXPRESSED IN PERCENTAGE POINT TERMS. SOURCE: EPDK, MEES.   TURKEY CRUDE IMPORTS ('000 B/D): RESURGENT IRAN OVERTAKES IRAQ AS TOP SUPPLIER FOR 2017...   ...BUT THE LAST TWO MONTHS OF 2017 SEE IRAN VOLUMES SLUMP TO THE LOWEST LEVEL SINCE 2010* ('00...

Turkey Gas Imports (Bcm): 2017 Sees Record 55.2bcm, With Volumes From Top Two SuppliersRussia (28.6bcm) And Iran (9.3bcm) Also At Record Levels; Imports Of US LNG Up Eight-Fold

Crude Official Selling Prices ($/B)

...*VS ICE BRENT FROM JULY 2017 PREVIOUSLY VS BWAVE.  ...

Egypt: Key West Nile Delta Project Set For Start-Up

...an [in] the summer,” Mr Dudley told the firm’s 7 February Q4 earnings call. “The wells in the Taurus and Libra fields are close to coming onstream. Production in West Nile Delta is scheduled for the second quarter of 2017,” RWE says. The Taurus and Libra fields constitute the 600mn cfd Phase 1 of th...

Algeria Keeps Oil Spending Flat, Extends Exploration Search Offshore

...Algerian state oil firm Sonatrach has announced an eye-catching $50bn planned five year upstream spend for 2017-21. The figure is a slight increase on that for the most recent five-year plan, but a significant reduction compared to previous years. Once plans to spend about $5bn/year do...

Ta-Ta Taq Taq: Demise of Key Kurdish Field Weighs On KRG Exports

...port blend in February, it will still have grown heavier over the past year. KRG output averaged around 543,000 b/d last year and despite the Taq Taq woes, the KRG ought to exceed this in 2017, if only because a February-March 2016 pipeline outage hit last year’s figures. Absent similar outages th...

Kuwait Refinery Shuts, New Capacity Delayed, Crude Exports To Rise

...til the start-up of the country’s ambitious $12bn ‘clean fuels project’ refinery expansion and upgrade plans. But this in turn has been pushed back from 2017 to 2018-19, and even the latter timeframe may prove ambitious. KNPC brought forward the Shuaiba shutdown after a series of unscheduled ou...

Rosatom Starts Work On New Iran Nuclear Plant, Cementing Russia’s Mena Presence

...24 1.0 2 5.5 Rosatom building. Work started Mar 2017 Planned: Iran Bushehr-3 20...

Americas To Asia Crude: In It For The Long Haul

...at 2017 sees the acceleration of a trend already in effect in 2015 and 2016 of increasing Americas crude volumes washing up in Asia. China has been the key pioneer in this regard. Venezuelan crude long dominated regional supplies to China as the country sought to keep up with ‘repayments’ on ever-in...

Libyan Oil Output Gains Go Into Reverse Amid Growing Instability

...the field were ongoing. Third Force members wrote to NOC warning them that uncontrolled militia would threaten the Sharara pipeline, Libya Herald reported. LIBYAN GAS EXPORTS (MN CFD)*... VOLUMES STARTED 2017 STRONGLY, FELL IN LATE JANUARY, AND COLLAPSED TO JUST 110MN CFD ON 28 MARCH *AL...

Hungary’s Mol - Mena Profile: No More Chasing Barrels

...ins’ made so far have come from squeezing engineering and oil field service firms – these firms at least view this as unsustainable (MEES, 3 February). Mol feels the majority of its cuts are sustainable, however, and will help propel the firm to a similarly successful 2017. “We started to take a lo...

Aramco’s Tax Slashed To Boost IPO Valuation

...ovided long-awaited transparency on an issue that will have critical importance in determining the success of the 5% share listing of Aramco scheduled for late-2018. The new rate is effective retroactively from 1 January 2017. As well as income tax, Aramco currently pays a 20% royalty on revenue, a fe...

Saudi Wealth Fund Eyes $3bn Jordan Investments

...EMPLOYMENT Following a mission to Jordan in mid-March, the IMF noted that the conflicts in Syria and Iraq continued to weigh on the Jordanian economy, with growth expected at around 2% in 2016 and unemployment rising to 15.3%. But it expects that growth will pick up modestly in 2017, driven by a moderate re...

East Med Deepwater Exploration: In Search Of ‘More Zohr’

...ey reviewed the seismic with the new Zohr concept in mind and liked what they saw. Eni, in its latest annual report, released 22 March, reiterates that it expects first gas from Zohr before the end of 2017. Output is set to reach the Phase 1 plateau of 1.2bn cfd by March/April next year, ramping up...

Aramco IPO Valuation: The Devil Is In The Detail

...the Saudi state’s need to balance its budget that has been running at a deficit due to the slump in oil prices since mid-2014. The country’s 2017 budget projects a sizeable SR198bn ($53bn) deficit, albeit down by a third from 2016 (MEES, 6 January), with ratings agency Fitch this week downgrading Sa...

Aramco, Sabic Ink China Downstream Deals During King Salman’s Asian Tour

...ars. But it was knocked off its perch in 2016, with Russia edging it out (by 1.05mn b/d to 1.02mn b/d). It’s got off to a strong start in 2017, beating Russia in the first two months: in February, China imported 1.25mn b/d from Saudi – the most since February 2016. At a development forum in Beijing on...