US Shale Output – Gains Continue Despite Cost-Cutting, Fewer New Rigs

...528 set in October 2014. July’s month-on-month gains, at 14, are the lowest since June last year: December 2016 to April 2017 saw an average of 50 rigs a month added. MORE WITH LESS? These figures so far chime with the ‘more for less’ mantra of US shale-focused companies in their recent Q2 ea...

Egypt: Mid-Size E&Ps Still Living Hand-To-Mouth Despite Gas Renaissance

...velopment, which is 80% complete and due for December 2017 start-up, by managing to pay off a large part of the receivables the firm is owed. At the end of 2016 Eni was owed $611mn, with $420mn overdue, but that has now almost been halved to $310mn with no amount overdue. Eni’s 10% partner in Zohr, UK ma...

Dana Gas: Profits Up, Litigation Up, Zora Write-Down Looms

...UAE firm Dana Gas this week reported a rise in profits and revenue for the first half of 2017 based on sharply higher oil prices, and lower capex, compared to the same period last year. But litigation is beginning to rival gas and oil production as Dana’s main line of business, with ho...

TransGlobe: Exploration Write-Dow, Cargo Delay

...ded 2,500-2,700 b/d of Canadian output in January – its only non-Egypt production. The firm now plans 2017 capex of $41.5mn (Egypt $35.4mn), towards the lower end of earlier guidance. TransGlobe priority for the second half of 2017 is to firm up the production potential of the Boraq discovery on th...

Mini Egypt Bid Round As GPC Expands

...nancial year (to 30 June 2017), of which around 47,000 b/d is oil and around 22mn cfd gas. A 4 August oil minstry press release says output has since risen further, to a record 57,000 boe/d. For 2017-18 as a whole GPC plans output of 53,000 b/d crude and 30mn cfd of gas, an implied total of around 59,000 bo...

Saudi Cuts Deficit, But Only Thanks To Higher Oil Price

...also some 26% less than the SR198bn ($52.8bn) figure in the original 2017 budget (MEES, 6 January). The improvement is thanks to the 62.7% (SR82.1bn) increase in H1 oil revenues versus a year earlier. Saudi Arab Light crude averaged $50.4/B in H1 2017, up 38.4% on the H1 2016 price of $36...

Abu Dhabi Plans Further Offshore Reshuffling

...pplier (with just under 300,000 b/d for H1 2017), with Thailand in turn Abu Dhabi’s #3 customer (see data, p17). PTT has both production and development projects in Algeria and is a pre-qualifier for Iranian upstream awards. Russian state-firm Rosneft was prequalified for Adco but in the end didn’t su...

Egypt Oil Output: Apache Looks To Low Hanging Fruit For Output Rebound

...Whilst gas has grabbed the headlines since Eni’s mid-2015 Zohr discovery, oil production has remained on a downward trajectory. Egypt’s crude and condensate output averaged just 623,000 b/d in the first half of 2017, the lowest for any comparable period since 1981. Egypt was a net crude ex...

Iraq Makes Progress On Chronic Gas Shortage

...average 711mn cfd over the course of 2017 and plans to hit 1bn cfd the following year. So far this year, Iraq is certainly posting strong gains. Sales gas volumes are up 20% in the first half of the year to average 1.12bn cfd. The proportion of gas flared has fallen from 64.4% to 59.0% over th...

Offshore Exploration: What Chance Of A Rebound?

...cent Q2 results of taking advantage of lower prices to increase investment in long-term projects. Exxon plans to increase capex over the coming years – albeit modestly. “As a rule going forward we are sticking with around $22bn in 2017, slowly ramping up [to $25bn] through the end of the decade,” IR...

Mauritania: 15 Tcf Tortue FLNG Targets 2021 Start Up

...ars. In addition to being the largest discovery of 2017 in creating a second LNG hub in the region, the Yakaar results further de-risk the key play elements of the basin… Subsequent wells in our drilling program [have] a similar geologic setting,” Mr Inglis says. But with “~75% of undrilled pr...

Oman Lines Up Duqm Contractors, Targets Products Exports

...oducts, to Asia and Africa in particular (see map). Oman produced 968,000 b/d of crude and condensate in H1 2017 and exported 809,000 b/d. Products trade in either direction is minimal, though most months see some diesel exports. Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas and Korea’s Daewoo E&C have been selected by DR...

Opec Banks On Oil Demand Boost From Stronger Economic Growth

...Waning compliance with the Opec/non-Opec “declaration of cooperation” to curb crude output is severely hampering efforts to rebalance the crude market. Allied with strong production gains elsewhere, this poor compliance has helped keep global stock levels high, putting a lid on prices in 2017...

SK Inks Tabriz Refinery Deal As Korean Investment Hits $19bn

...re need of upgrade and modernization.” The upgrade is intended to reduce Tabriz’s fuel oil output to 2% of total production. One of the aims of Iran’s refinery upgrade program is to reduce the need for gasoline imports, which averaged 49,000 b/d in 2016 and 64,000 b/d in the first four months of 2017...

Iran’s Rohani Targets More Foreign Investment, Shadow Lenders

...eraged 3.8mn b/d compared to 2.85mn b/d in 2015 (MEES, 4 August). Latest Central Bank of Iran (CBI) statistics show that real GDP grew at 12.5% for the Iranian year ending 20 March 2017, driven by the rise in oil production. But the economy in general is still suffering from lack of liquidity, large de...

Italy Crude Imports ('000 B/D): Iran Overtakes Iraq & Saudi Arabia As Top Middle East Supplier In 2017

US Output: New Records, But Gains Slow

...1H 2018 – reflecting the delayed impact of the recent drilling slowdown (see p7) – before breaking 10mn b/d for the first time in November 2018, in line with previous projections. •  2017 output is now forecast at 9.345mn b/d, just below 2015’s 9.409mn b/d, before rising to 9.911mn b/d for 20...

Zohr Almost There As Egypt Plots Further Gas Gains

...ntracted by Eni to drill two wells offshore Cyprus at the end of 2017 and start of 2018. “Regarding our wells in Cyprus, we plan to restart a drilling campaign before the year end with new wells, two additional wells, to be drilled back-to-back,” Chief Exploration Officer Luca Bertelli says. Eni op...

Libya: Cautious Optimism With Output At 3-Year High

...C? Output from the key Sharara fields in the southwest of Libya averaged 189,000 b/d in Q2, and 251,000 b/d in June according to figures given in the H1 2017 interim report of Spain’s Repsol, leader of the Akakus JV which operates the fields. Repsol’s net figures were 23,000 b/d for Q2 and 29,800 b/d fo...

Genel Makes Profit in H1 2017, Clock Is Ticking On KRG Gas Plans

...Despite KRG-focused Genel Energy’s production collapsing, the firm swung to profit in H1 2017. Reduced oil output means gas development is more important than ever. The precipitous collapse in Taq Taq output has seen Genel’s only producing operated-field fall to barely 25% of the firm’s ne...