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Egypt Upstream Spending Slashed With Oil Price ‘Disaster’
...w several go bust (MEES, 3 February 2017). With Brent prices having collapsed from $67/B at the start of 2020 to barely half this as MEES went to press, many smaller producers are slashing all but essential spending in a bid to keep their heads above water. One such firm is Canada’s Tr...
Volume: 63Issue: 11Published at Fri, 13 Mar 2020 -
Global Inventories Set To Swell Amid Opec Showdown
...awdown of inventories that has taken place since 2017. The IEA and Opec released their monthly oil market reports this week, with both making sharp downgrades to demand growth expectations in light of the escalating Covid-19 pandemic (see tables). The IEA now sees demand contracting by 90,000 b/d th...
Volume: 63Issue: 11Published at Fri, 13 Mar 2020 -
US Shale In The Time Of Lower Prices
...97mn b/d in March 2015 by mid-2016 production was almost 15% lower. But lower prices spurred a wave of cost cutting, and higher oil prices since 2017 have provided an extra boost (to put it mildly). By late 2017 output had topped 2015 highs. And it hadn’t looked back since. Until now. Latest pr...
Volume: 63Issue: 11Published at Fri, 13 Mar 2020 -
Iran Boosts Uranium Upgrading As Domestic Problems Mount
...er 20mn t/y exported. This has likely fallen sharply since the US targeted major producer and exporter PGPIC (MEES, 14 June 2019). Crude and condensate exports averaged a record 2.66mn b/d in 2017 and hit 2.8mn b/d as recently as mid-2018 before collapsing later in the year with the imposition of US sa...
Volume: 63Issue: 11Published at Fri, 13 Mar 2020 -
Kuwait Starts Up Naphtha Unit In CFP Upgrade
...se from 270,000 b/d to 454,000 b/d, whilst Mina al-Ahmadi’s will fall from 466,000 b/d to 347,000 b/d, an overall 9% increase to 801,000 b/d (MEES, 8 March 2019). KNPC originally intended the CFP to be fully operational in late 2017, but completion in the fourth quarter of 2020 now appears the best pr...
Volume: 63Issue: 11Published at Fri, 13 Mar 2020 -
Oil Price Crash Puts Vulnerable Mena Economies At Even Greater Risk
...so see a slump. Doha projected a modest $100mn budget surplus this year and may well flip into deficit for the first time since 2017 (MEES, 31 January). KEY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS *Without implementing swingeing cuts Saudi Arabia’s 2020 budget deficit risks ballooning by 70%. *Th...
Volume: 63Issue: 11Published at Fri, 13 Mar 2020 -
Mauritania: Cairn Entry
...ES, 27 August 2012). After making a third sub-commercial discovery, Frégate, in 2012-13 (MEES, 13 February 2013), the two firms quit the acreage in 2017, only for Total to snap up Block C7 later the same year. BP and partner Kosmos are the key players off Mauritania with two major hub LNG de...
Volume: 63Issue: 11Published at Fri, 13 Mar 2020 -
Saudi Starts Up Key Fadhili Gas Plant
...aning that even after Tanajib starts up it will still be short by nearly 1.5bn cfd (MEES, 15 December 2017). The enormous $110bn Jafurah unconventional gas project is slated to start-up in 2024, but initial volumes are unclear. Given the long ramp-up to 2.2bn cfd sales gas capacity in 2036, Jafurah is un...
Volume: 63Issue: 10Published at Fri, 06 Mar 2020 -
Algeria’s Hassi Messaoud Gets Boost, More To Come
...ES, 21 February). Dodsal is also working on a 66,000 b/d gas-oil separation and compression project at the southern end of Hassi Messaoud, which at the time of its award in 2017 had a 2020 completion target. This is likely to slip however, as Algeria’s 2018 energy activity report released in Oc...
Volume: 63Issue: 10Published at Fri, 06 Mar 2020 -
Algiers Refinery Hike
...ECC, which took over the project in late 2016 after French firm Technip’s original contract was cancelled in 2015 (MEES, 9 June 2017). By that time Technip was already well behind on its initial 38-month work schedule. Fast forward to the “completion” date of 21 February 2019 and it appeared the re...
Volume: 63Issue: 10Published at Fri, 06 Mar 2020 -
Occidental’s Mideast Gas Output Booms
...oup. Amec Foster Wheeler in 2016-17 carried out the Feed study for the previous phase of Shah expansion (MEES, 15 September 2017) Oxy’s 24.5% stake in the Dolphin consortium which delivers Qatari gas via pipeline to the UAE and Oman netted it a three-year high 161mn cfd last year, including a re...
Volume: 63Issue: 10Published at Fri, 06 Mar 2020 -
Opec Gets No Cuts In The Time Of Coronavirus
...commendation for Opec+ to deepen cuts by 1.5mn b/d (1mn b/d to Opec and 500,000 b/d to non-Opec) for Q2, before returning to Q1 levels for the remainder of 2020, Brent settled below $50/B for the first time since July 2017. A matter of hours later, Opec released a fresh announcement that it recommended the 1....
Volume: 63Issue: 10Published at Fri, 06 Mar 2020 -
Aramco’s $69.1bn Sabic Takeover Refuels PIF Ambitions
...presents an expansion from 2017’s 14.6mn t/y capacity. The 2017 total fell to 9.9mn t/y when excluding intermediate products (MEES, 24 August 2018). As for Sabic, 2018 petchems output totaled 61.6mn t/y of which up to two-thirds are intermediate products (MEES, 22 March). Even at 20mn t/y, this would still be...
Volume: 62Issue: 13Published at Fri, 29 Mar 2019 -
Oman Eyes $3.85bn Sri Lanka Refinery Project
...ES, 22 March). After upgrading the Sohar refinery to 197,000 b/d in 2017 (MEES, 17 February 2017), Oman is now pushing on with the $8bn Duqm refinery which will add an additional 230,000 b/d. A separate petrochemicals complex at Duqm is also slowly beginning to push forward – though construction is so...
Volume: 62Issue: 13Published at Fri, 29 Mar 2019 -
2018 US Crude Exports Double; New Monthly High In Jan
...e US, up more than fourfold on 2017 but still well behind China (249,000 b/d) as the US’ top Asian customer. *Korean buying from the US (and other long-haul sources such as the North Sea) has been boosted by a tax break on imports of non-Mideast cargoes in a bid to diversify the country’s import sl...
Volume: 62Issue: 13Published at Fri, 29 Mar 2019 -
GCC Downstream Giants Eye Revolutionary Plastics Technology
...mmercialize one of them. Sabic had patented a process to produce chemicals directly from crude using existing downstream units in a new configuration (MEES, 1 December 2017). However, Aramco took a more revolutionary route by developing new technologies. Besides squeezing more out of its resources, Aramco ch...
Volume: 62Issue: 13Published at Fri, 29 Mar 2019 -
Egypt Solar Capacity To Soar In 2019 With Benban Boom
...ansmission line 12km east of the park. In addition, Substation-3 will also be directly linked to a 500kV overhead transmission line which runs just 500m east of the park. 2017 saw work on only one plot (5-1) of the 37.2 km2 park being built in the desert 40km north of Aswan. Egypt’s Infinity Solar says it...
Volume: 62Issue: 13Published at Fri, 29 Mar 2019 -
Israeli-Arab Relations Under The Spotlight As Leviathan Start-Up Nears
...bassy in Amman shot and killed two Jordanians in 2017 saw Israel’s embassy close for six months (MEES, 19 January 2018). And US President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in late 2017 made matters even worse. Israel’s poor handling of security at Al Aqsa mosque, of which Jordan is te...
Volume: 62Issue: 13Published at Fri, 29 Mar 2019 -
Senior UAE Official Calls For Israeli Dialogue
...iticism of “subversive Qatari politics and support for extremism and terrorist organizations” in the wake of the June 2017 GCC rift (MEES, 9 June 2017). His views on the UAE’s neighbor haven’t softened over the past two years....
Volume: 62Issue: 13Published at Fri, 29 Mar 2019 -
…Keeps Israel Steady
...ficit widened from 1.9% of GDP in 2017 to 2.9% last year and Fitch forecasts it to widen even further to 3.5% of GDP in 2019 before narrowing to 3.0% in 2020. “Israel’s macroeconomic performance has been impressive and the economy remained buoyant in 2018, with real GDP growth of 3.3%, low un...
Volume: 62Issue: 13Published at Fri, 29 Mar 2019