Iraq: China’s Jereh Inks Mansuriya Contract

...e firm’s exit amidst the Islamic State’s rise in 2014. A subsequent award to Sinopec in 2021 also failed over similar disagreements. The contract comes as Chinese firms are further expanding their footprint in the country (see p2).       ...

Iraq Approves Mansuriya Gas Award

...riod. Mansuriya was originally awarded in 2011 to a consortium led by Turkey’s TPAO. Development was halted following attacks by the Islamic State across the province in 2014. Disagreement on commercial terms subsequently pushed Baghdad to take over the field in 2018 (MEES, 3 August 2018). Chinese state fi...

UAE President Khalifa Bin Zayed Passes Away

...Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE and ruler of Abu Dhabi, passed away on 13 May at the age of 73. Sheikh Khalifa had been president since November 2004 and was the eldest son of the UAE’s founder Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. Since suffering a stroke in January 2014...

Sonatrach: A Return To Libya?

...andon its exploration activities on the Libyan side of the Algeria-Libya border in 2014 due to a deteriorating security situation. It had made a number of promising discoveries close to existing infrastructure up until that point (MEES, 11 June 2012 & MEES, 22 February 2013). Sonatrach holds 50% of Ar...

Neutral Zone Set To Close Again

...It was a brief run, but having started producing in February for the first time since 2014 the Khafji field is once again being shut-in. Located in the Neutral Zone (PNZ) where output is split 50:50 between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, an agreement reached in late 2019 saw output restart, with th...

Egypt Lines Up Ammonia Project

...st of $10.9bn. The project, conceived when Egypt’s gas resources were increasingly overstretched, is intended to process 4mn t/y of imported naphtha (MEES, 4 April 2014). Financing remains incomplete despite EPC work being awarded in mid-2018 (MEES, 14 December 2018).  ...

Sipchem/Sahara Complete Merger

...mpanies first announced a plan to merge in December 2013, but shelved it after the 2014 collapse in crude oil prices undermined their business outlook (MEES, 26 August 2016).  ...

Rosneft Begins Pilot Production in Iraqi Kurdistan

...10,000 b/d installed by former Hungarian operator Mol, which could also be linked to the nearby Jisik discovery (MEES, 31 August 2018). Mol had high hopes for Bijeel, targeting 50,000 b/d (MEES, 15 August 2014), but it exited in 2016 after downgrading reserves from 800mn barrels to just 4mn (MEES, 15...

Iraq Rig Count Hits 73 For April, Highest Since 2014 Oil Price Slump