1. Oman’s Long-Awaited 230,000 b/d Duqm Refinery Gets A Right Royal Reception

    ...y to inaugurate the Middle East’s newest refinery. The ceremony caps nearly twenty years of planning and work on the refinery (MEES, 4 December 2006), with start-up repeatedly delayed from its original 2012 plan (MEES, 12 October 2012). Kuwait joined the $9bn project in 2017 with the signing of...

    Volume: 67
    Issue: 06
    Published at Fri, 09 Feb 2024
  2. Saudi Arabia’s Luberef Secures Samref VGO

    ...ceives up to 50,000 b/d of RCO through pipeline connections to Yanbu’s refineries, while the Jeddah plant has had to receive its 24,500 b/d via tanker since the Jeddah refinery shut in 2017 (MEES, 24 November 2017). Yanbu RCO supplies were increased by 5,000 b/d in June 2023 under a new 12-month su...

    Volume: 67
    Issue: 05
    Published at Fri, 02 Feb 2024
  3. Iran’s High Winter Gas Demand Dampens Transit Hub Ambitions

    ...llowing a five-year hiatus after Turkmengaz in 2017 halted flows over claims that NIGC owed it $1.8bn for previous deliveries (MEES, 13 January 2017). This was officially resolved last June according to NIGC after Baghdad paid some $2.76bn from Iran’s frozen energy dues in Iraq. The nature of the Tu...

    Volume: 67
    Issue: 03
    Published at Fri, 19 Jan 2024
  4. Qatar Breaks Ground On Historic LNG Expansion Project

    ...eld.  These figures stand to be turbocharged by the expansion project. The critical importance of Qatar’s LNG exports to the global economy was also pivotal in enabling the emirate to withstand the 2017-2021 embargo imposed by many of its neighbors. Saudi Arabia and the UAE could not realistically pu...

    Volume: 66
    Issue: 40
    Published at Fri, 06 Oct 2023
  5. Qatar Signs 10-Year Naphtha Deal With Marubeni

    ...wnstream investments leading to the inauguration of Qatar’s first three export trains in 1996 (MEES, 28 July 2017). However, the contract for Qatargas 1 expired in January 2022, with Marubeni losing its stakes in the project. More recently Marubeni has invested in regional renewable energy projects. Th...

    Volume: 66
    Issue: 39
    Published at Fri, 29 Sep 2023
  6. Oman Gas Networks: Expansion In The Pipeline

    ...derway or planned projects to expand the capacity of pipelines to meet existing and upcoming gas-fed projects along the sultanate’s coast. Oman’s gas sector took off in 2017 with the startup of the BP-operated Khazzan tight gas field, with the second phase Ghazeer development boosting capacity to 2bn cf...

    Volume: 66
    Issue: 38
    Published at Fri, 22 Sep 2023
  7. Lebanon Hooked On Diesel Imports Amid Financial Crisis

    ...shington earlier this year for “importing tainted fuel, causing significant harm to Lebanese power plants.”   Interestingly, between 2017 and 2020 Lebanon’s fuel oil shipments originated mainly from the United States followed by several European countries including Belgium, Netherlands, and Spain. Ga...

    Volume: 66
    Issue: 35
    Published at Fri, 01 Sep 2023
  8. Al Zour Emerges As Qatar’s VLSFO Supplier Of Choice

    ...th the International Maritime Organization’s 2020 regulation.” Qatar had earlier been forced to quickly develop its bunkering capabilities following the start of the embargo imposed on it by neighboring states between June 2017 and January 2021, with Qatari vessels prohibited from calling at Fu...

    Volume: 66
    Issue: 30
    Published at Fri, 28 Jul 2023
  9. Middle East Replaces Displaced Russian Distillates In Europe

    ...rrels. Exports to Europe, including via Egypt’s Sidi Kerir storage hub, jumped by nearly 100,000 b/d to 772,000 b/d for Q1 according to data intelligence firm Kpler. This was the highest figure in Kpler data going back to 2017 and accounted for 46% of total Gulf middle distillate exports of 1....

    Volume: 66
    Issue: 17
    Published at Fri, 28 Apr 2023
  10. Oman LNG Exports Soar To New Record Highs

    ...nfirmed. REVITALIZED GAS SECTOR  The surge in Oman LNG exports is largely thanks to the resurgence of the sultanate’s upstream gas sector. The September 2017 start-up of BP’s 1bn cfd Khazzan tight gas development sparked its upstream gas sector and the second phase Ghazeer development brought capacity to...

    Volume: 66
    Issue: 14
    Published at Fri, 07 Apr 2023
  11. QatarEnergy To Take Over LNG Marketing Role

    ...e in one place. And the savings are huge. Two billion riyals operating costs saved annually” (MEES, 8 December 2017). The post-RasGas system had grown somewhat less unified of late, with QatarEnergy establishing its own LNG trading team. The new entity was announced in November 2020 with a ma...

    Volume: 66
    Issue: 08
    Published at Fri, 24 Feb 2023
  12. Qatar Takes FID On Huge Petrochemicals Complex

    ...CUS   Qatar first announced plans for this major new petrochemicals venture in 2017, with Mr Kaabi telling MEES in an interview that it was planning a “world-scale” facility to process ethane from its mammoth North Field gas expansion project (MEES, 8 December 2017). This was a major development given th...

    Volume: 66
    Issue: 02
    Published at Fri, 13 Jan 2023
  13. Israel’s Paz Eyes ‘Ashdod Oil Refinery’ Spin-Off As Margins Surge

    ...gh margins this year, though revenues were hit by a full maintenance shutdown between May and July which left Q3’s output of 62,700 b/d the lowest since Q2 2017 (see chart 1). Despite the prolonged Paz outage, Israel’s overall refinery output is on course to post a three-year high, averaging 27...

    Volume: 65
    Issue: 48
    Published at Fri, 02 Dec 2022
  14. Uniper Seeks Buyers For Fujairah Refinery

    ...rket. The two-train topping plant started commercial operations in 2017, and Uniper says it has “the capacity to produce about 5mn t/y of marine fuels with sulfur content as low as 0.1% and up to IMO 2020 specifications [0.5%].” The refinery runs on crude oil feedstock imported on tankers. Data in...

    Volume: 65
    Issue: 46
    Published at Fri, 18 Nov 2022
  15. Sabic: Jubail MEG Start-Up

    ...bsidiary. United (Sabic 75%, Public Pension Agency 15%, General Organization for Social Insurance 10%) awarded Korea’s Samsung Engineering a $700mn contract for construction of the 700,000 t/y MEG plant in December 2017 with completion initially scheduled for 2020 (MEES, 5 January 2018). The facility was fl...

    Volume: 65
    Issue: 42
    Published at Fri, 21 Oct 2022
  16. Iran Eyes Local Firms For Downstream Boost

    ...OEC), said on 30 August that “physical progress” had reached 95% at the 210,000 b/d CDU and 100,000 b/d VDU units. The project is financed by a 2017 Sinosure $1.3bn credit line (MEES, 10 February 2017), and Chinese state firm Sinopec has been involved. NIORDC expects the upgrade to be finalised this mo...

    Volume: 65
    Issue: 36
    Published at Fri, 09 Sep 2022
  17. Aramco’s Overseas Downstream Expansion: Much More To Come

    ...vestments “We’re looking at highly integrated complexes that have more than 50% liquid to chemical [conversion rate].” One such investment that was struck back in 2017 but has suffered repeated delays is the Pengerang Refining and Petrochemical (PRefChem) JV with Petronas, which operates a 300,000 b/d co...

    Volume: 65
    Issue: 33
    Published at Fri, 19 Aug 2022
  18. Qatar: 2026 Cracker Start

    ...nocoPhillips have secured stakes. The LNG expansion project will provide ethane feedstock for RLPP. When announcing the planned facility in 2017, Mr Kaabi told MEES that “for the first time in Qatar we are going to extract ethane before we liquefy. So we are going to have a major petrochemical plant in ad...

    Volume: 65
    Issue: 23
    Published at Fri, 10 Jun 2022
  19. Key Sadara Chemicals Pipeline Boosts PlasChem Operations

    ...p). The Sadara complex is centered around a 1.9mn t/y mixed-feed cracker, which is able to process up to 53,000 b/d of naphtha and 85mn cfd of ethane and an aromatics plant producing 280,000 t/y of benzene and 134,000 t/y of toluene. The final Sadara unit started operations in 2017 (MEES, 18 August 2017...

    Volume: 65
    Issue: 22
    Published at Fri, 03 Jun 2022
  20. Iraqi Kurdistan’s Energy Sector Under Attack

    ...vancing Islamic State and Kurdish fighters filled the vacuum, saw it banned by NOC following the federal government’s re-taking of the fields in 2017. Kar’s proposal to take over two power plants in Basra last year was denounced by MPs (MEES, 12 February 2021) who labeled it as a sell-off of “state as...

    Volume: 65
    Issue: 18
    Published at Fri, 06 May 2022