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Gulf Offshore Drilling At 10-Year Low As Saudi, Abu Dhabi Stall On Contracts
...abia, also the lowest figure in almost 10 years (see chart). The UAE also had 10 rigs for October, the lowest since August 2014, whilst Qatar accounted for the remaining five. Recent earnings calls of offshore drilling firms add some color to the factors behind this slump in activity. They also su...
Volume: 63Issue: 47Published at Fri, 20 Nov 2020 -
Opec+ Looks Ahead To Crunch Meeting
...t more than 500,000 b/d beyond its allocation in order to comply – a highly unlikely move that would necessitate producing below 3.3mn b/d for the first time since 2014. Iraq undeniably faces severe economic challenges (MEES, 16 October), but failure to comply risks fomenting divisions within Op...
Volume: 63Issue: 47Published at Fri, 20 Nov 2020 -
Oman To Introduce Income Tax: Will Rest Of GCC Follow?
...er $100/B prior to late 2014, Oman was still unable to balance the budget as Muscat looked to avoid contagion from the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ with 2012-14 spending blowouts. While the government is seemingly unable to reduce spending on salaries, the looming implementation of 5% VAT will have a si...
Volume: 63Issue: 46Published at Fri, 13 Nov 2020 -
India Crude: Saudi Squeezed
...India’s crude imports remain well down on year-ago levels as Covid-19 infection rates and the impact on the country’s economy remain high. September’s crude imports of 3.14mn b/d were the third lowest since 2014; only May and July, at the height of lockdown, were lower. Average 9M 2020 im...
Volume: 63Issue: 46Published at Fri, 13 Nov 2020 -
Petrofac Seeks $530mn From Bp/Equinor Algeria Gas Project As Finances Stretches By Continued Saudi Boycott
...four southern fields to “maintain production at 9 bcm/year [870mn cfd] … for years to come” (MEES, 19 February 2016). Recent output has been just a third of this level (see box). Petrofac fully remobilised in early 2014, but the firm has since issued “multiple Variation Order Requests (VoRs) re...
Volume: 63Issue: 45Published at Fri, 06 Nov 2020 -
Oman Sees Economic Weaknesses Play A Geopolitical Role
...l revenues. But it never fully recovered from 2014’s oil price crash. Coupled with a post-Arab Spring spending spree, this saw its debt balloon from $4bn in 2013 to $50bn just seven years later. This year’s collapse in oil prices added insult to injury. Revenues fell from $14.3bn in 1H 2019 to $12...
Volume: 63Issue: 44Published at Fri, 30 Oct 2020 -
Eni’s Zohr Under Threat From Water Infiltration
...2.7bn cfd was raised to 3.2bn cfd at the behest of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as Egypt suffered gas shortages between 2014-2017, causing countrywide power cuts. In June last year at a conference in Cairo delegates warned that over-drilling could result in the reservoir’s collapse but th...
Volume: 63Issue: 42Published at Fri, 16 Oct 2020 -
Korea Crude Imports 6-Year Low, Taiwan Lowest In Decades
...e lowest annual figure since 2014. MIDEAST SLUMP Not only are Korean imports down but Middle East volumes are down further, by 10% for the first nine months of 2020 with Korea taking an 11-year low of just 1.68mn b/d from the Middle East in September. The region’s share of th...
Volume: 63Issue: 42Published at Fri, 16 Oct 2020 -
SEC $80bn Debt Dilemma
...reement with seven Saudi banks for SR9bn ($2.4bn) to finance “general corporate purposes including capital expenditure.” Overall, SEC has raised $51.3bn since July 2007, mainly through sukuk and bank loans. The largest loan by far, of $13.2bn, was granted by the Ministry of Finance in March 2014 (ME...
Volume: 63Issue: 42Published at Fri, 16 Oct 2020 -
Turkey’s East Med Drilling Campaign: Politics By Other Means
...In the scramble for the East Med, Turkey has been mixing guns with energy. A prolific politics-first drilling campaign has so far failed to result in an ‘economic’ discovery. But will Turkey’s ‘drill, baby, drill’ mentality see it strike gas? When in 2014 your correspondent asked the now-Tu...
Volume: 63Issue: 41Published at Fri, 09 Oct 2020 -
Iraq’s Economy Teeters Despite Q3 Revenue Rebound
...ll below 3mn b/d for the first time since 2014 (see chart). If one sums up the extent of Iraq’s economic woes, it is that $43bn is far short of the $50bn earmarked this year for the bloated public sector’s ‘salaries and pensions’ alone (MEES, 8 May). Given Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s pr...
Volume: 63Issue: 41Published at Fri, 09 Oct 2020 -
Acwa Control At Rawec As JGC Quits
...keover, Rawec had a strained relationship with Petro Rabigh: a 2013 outage at its utilities plant damaged a number of furnaces in the petchem plant’s cracker. Petro Rabigh threatened to terminate Rawec’s supply contract until a SR1.125bn ($300mn) compensation deal was agreed (MEES, 6 June 2014...
Volume: 63Issue: 41Published at Fri, 09 Oct 2020 -
Egypt Power Use Suffers Amid Covid Demand Depression
...nce 2014-15’s 147.0TWh. *Power consumption by the industrial sector slumped 13% year-on-year to just 9.58TWh for Q2, the lowest quarter since 1Q16 and the lowest second quarter in over a decade. For 2019-20 as a whole, industrial consumption was down 7% at 41.2TWh, the lowest figure since 20...
Volume: 63Issue: 40Published at Fri, 02 Oct 2020 -
Asian LNG Demand Up This Year Despite Covid
...ers (MEES, 11 September). The slump in prices is now being felt in Qatar, and Taiwan paid an average of just $4.78/mn BTU for Qatar volumes in August (the latest data): as with its overall import price this is the lowest figure since 2014. *Other bargain-basement recent buying by Taiwan saw su...
Volume: 63Issue: 39Published at Fri, 25 Sep 2020 -
Turkey Unites Rival East Med Players As Regional ‘Gas Forum’ Expands Ambitions
...peline plans for the photo-opportunity this affords them. Plans for an Israel-Cyprus-Greece-Italy gas pipeline have been included on a list of the EU’s ‘projects of common interest’ since 2014 (MEES, 12 December 2014), with EU energy commissioners a regular fixture at related meet-ups. Never mind the gl...
Volume: 63Issue: 39Published at Fri, 25 Sep 2020 -
Saudi Petchems Firms: Consolidation Ahead?
...ead in December 2018. Sipchem and Sahara had revived a merger plan that was shelved in 2014 as a massive collapse in crude prices slashed petchems earnings (MEES, 7 December 2018). Many of the other listed Saudi petchems firms – the Aramco/Dow Sadara joint venture is not traded on Tadawul – are su...
Volume: 63Issue: 39Published at Fri, 25 Sep 2020 -
Kuwait Burns Record Crude To Meet Power Surge
...quid used in the utilities sector this summer, with a record 184,000 b/d burned in July. This is the highest figure in at least 18-years. Even in the unlikely event that no crude oil is burned in the final five months of the year, the annual average would still be the highest since 2014. Diesel co...
Volume: 63Issue: 39Published at Fri, 25 Sep 2020 -
OPEC At 60: Much Achieved, More Still To Come
...wnturn of 2014-16, and has played a major role in reviving the oil industry on the back of the unprecedented oil demand impact as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The decisions taken by the 23 DoC countries in April and June 2020 were well-informed and well-communicated and provided reassurance to th...
Volume: 63Issue: 38Published at Fri, 18 Sep 2020 -
Morocco Renewables Plans Get Wind In Their Sails
...nfirmed it would supply twenty-seven 3.2MW wind turbines for the €140mn project, with commissioning scheduled for 2022. The US firm already manages Moroccan firm Nareva’s 200MW Akhfenir wind farm which was completed in 2014. 20-YEAR PPA As with Enel and Nareva’s Midelt and Boujdour wind farms, Ed...
Volume: 63Issue: 38Published at Fri, 18 Sep 2020 -
SEC ‘Green Sukuk’ Raises $1.3bn
...ans to fund capital projects, although the largest contribution was a $13.3bn loan in March 2014 from the Ministry of Finance. The utility has a strong credit rating, enabling it to borrow at attractive rates. Earlier this month Moody’s (which gives SEC an A2 rating) said “the company enjoys a do...
Volume: 63Issue: 38Published at Fri, 18 Sep 2020