Egypt Revisits IMF Loan As Gulf Aid Slows

...sh injection and subsequent volumes in 2014 and 2015 gave new President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi the breathing space to shun the IMF. But since the start of 2016 attempts by Gulf monarchies to rein in state spending have put a big question mark against continued aid to Egypt, prompting it to again lo...

US Anti-Hizbollah Sanctions Law Haunts Lebanon’s Banking Sector

...onomy is hampered by a power vacuum and parliament has been unable to elect a head of state to succeed former President Michel Sulaiman, whose term expired in May 2014. The paramilitary group, which is fighting on the side of the Syrian regime, is blamed by many politicians in Lebanon for preventing the el...

Bonds Away: GCC Countries Tap Markets For $3.5bn As Saudi Waits In Wings

...the onset of the oil price shock in 2014. But it adds that fiscal buffers estimated at around 85% of GDP in 2015 will provide support through the process of fiscal and external adjustment. The agency adds that Oman’s heavy economic and fiscal reliance on the oil and gas sector represent a key cr...

Taqa Issues $1bn Of Bonds To Refinance Debt

...ints, according to Bloomberg, which cited an unnamed person familiar with the deal. The agency says France’s BNP Paribas and Societe Generale, US’s Citigroup, UK’s HSBC, and UAE’s First Gulf Bank and National Bank of Abu Dhabi are managing the bond sale. Taqa last tapped the bond market in April 2014...

Bahrain: New Minister Challenged By Oxy/Mubadala Withdrawal

...0,942 b/d of Arab Medium crude in 2015. Bahrain gave up its territorial claim to the area surrounding the field in the 1950s in return for half of the field’s output. Meanwhile, imports from Saudi Arabia averaged 216,000 b/d last year, up from 208,000 b/d in 2014. These are through an ageing 230,000 b/d pi...

Iran Taps Koreans For Tabriz Refinery, Eyes $3.3bn Siraf Funding

...esel output from Tabriz at the expense of fuel oil. No schedule was announced, but the study is expected to take six months, according to Mehr News Agency. Latest data available from NIORDC show Tabriz refinery producing 21,000 b/d of gasoline and 42,000 b/d of gasoline in 2014, when fuel oil ou...

OPEC May Production Drops Despite Saudi And Iran Increases

...rt.   OPEC WELLHEAD PRODUCTION, May 2016 (MN B/D, MEES ESTIMATES)   May '16 chg Apr '16 Mar '16 May 16 v 15 Jan-May'16 v J-M15 Jan-May'15 2015 2014 S Arabia* 10.2 0....

US Imports More Gulf Opec Crude As Production Continues To Fall

...lumes from Iraq in May. Iraq supplied the US with 506,000 b/d of crude according to weekly data from the US government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), the highest amount since August 2014. Iraq exported a record-equaling 3.36mn b/d of Basra Light crude in April with not just the US, but also In...

Israel: Leviathan Plan Approved But Sales Still Needed

...port it to. Israel’s Zemach committee put a 540 bcm cap on the gas reserved for the domestic market and not on what it exports (MEES, 5 December 2014). So whether Leviathan produces 500 bcm, as the government estimates, or 620 bcm according to the partners, will not make a huge difference as it was no...

Saudi Arabia’s Transformation Plan Already Running Out of Time

...netary Agency (SAMA) 2015 Annual Report put the private sector contribution at 41.1% of GDP in 2014. Growing the private sector is key to the government’s aims of reducing unemployment among Saudis and reducing the public sector wage bill. But key obstacles to previous efforts to increase employment of...

Iran Struggles To Attract Investment Amid Continued Sanctions, Both Real & Perceived

...clear capability, has had a crippling impact on its economy. After these sanctions were tightened further in 2011, Iran’s roughly $420bn economy shrank by about 9% in the following two-year period that ended in March 2014, according to the IMF. Crude oil exports fell from 2.48mn b/d in 2011 to ju...

Iraq Plans Eurobond By End-2016

...onomy out of recession despite low oil prices, with real GDP estimated to have risen to 2.4% in 2015 from a contraction of 2.1% in 2014. The bank’s forecast for 2016 is GDP growth of 7.2%.  DESPITE RECORD VOLUMES, JAN-MAY IRAQI CRUDE EXPORT REVENUES WERE way BELOW BUDGET *IMPLIED BUDGET TA...

Egypt’s Med Gas Output Collapse: Can Even Zohr Make Up The Losses?

...tes ranging from 14% to an eye-watering 28% last year alone (see table). Collective output of 1.24bn cfd for 2015 (29% of Egypt’s total gas output) is down by 290mn cfd on 2014 and by a massive 765mn cfd (38%) on 2012’s peak 2.00bn cfd output. These four blocks alone account for a full 49% of Egypt’s ov...

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...