Egypt: ONS Hits 80mn Cfd

...erated by France’s Perenco. Production started in 2009 and peaked at 180mn cfd the following year before slumping. It continued to do so after EKH bought the asset in 2014, falling to just 25mn cfd for 1Q 2018. The turnaround came after EKH persuaded Cairo in July 2018 to pay a higher gas price ($5....

Egypt Cuts Road Fuel Prices

...ckage with the IMF which ended in June this year (MEES, 21 June). Though the (modest) price cuts followed some of the most vocal protests since Mr Sisi came to power in 2014 – with up to 3,000 people having been detained – the Oil Ministry insists that the gasoline prices cuts are not linked but ra...

Libya’s NOC Demands Funds

...s witnessed some wild fluctuations over the years - mainly due to conflict. It plummeted to a low of 200,000 b/d in April 2014, but has recovered in recent months and hit a six-year high 1.26mn b/d in May this year. September output came in at 1.22mn b/d. Years of neglect, war and un...

Morocco: Minnow Bags Deepwater Block

...-1 well drilled by US firm Kosmos and partner BP in April 2014 (MEES, 18 May 2014). The two firms, key partners off Mauritania and Senegal to the south, gave up on what was then the Foum Assaka block in 2016 with BP quitting Morocco to boot. Kosmos at the time said FA-1 “failed to find hy...

Oman’s First Wind Farm On Test

...oject was first given the go-ahead in 2014 (MEES, 25 August 2017). The farm will deliver electricity to state utility OPWP to supply customers via the local grid. Dhofar is Oman’s only wind project, although OPWP has announced a number of large-scale solar projects recently (MEES, 2 August). Only in Ma...

Mauritania: Tullow Quitting

...bsequent finds (MEES, 5 July). Prior to Tortue, Mauritania’s key (albeit more modest) gas find was the 1.5tcf Banda field. However then-operator Tullow shelved development plans after oil prices crashed in late 2014 (MEES, 13 February 2015). The firm hasn’t looked forward in Mauritania since....

Egypt Misses Receivables Deadline Again

...uld fully eliminate receivables by end-June 2019 (MEES, 12 April). It is not the first time Egypt has missed a self-imposed deadline, with former oil minister Sharif Ismail stating in 2014 that Cairo would completely pay off IOCs by the end of 2016. Nonetheless, Egypt has made good progress in pa...

UEG Shuffles Kec Yemen Assets

...ergy said it completed the transaction “to sell entire shares of Kuwait Energy Yemen Limited for a cash considering of US$1.” Blocks 5 and 43 in Yemen produced a combined 4,720 b/d in 2013 and 4,460 b/d in 2014 but have been under force majeure since 2015. Kuwait Energy produced 28,000 b/d net in 20...

Qatar: Long-Delayed Barzan Gas Approaches Start-Up

...shed startup well beyond the initially planned 2014 (MEES, 12 October 2012). Mr Kaabi told MEES in late 2017 that the latest delays were “because we have had issues with the pipeline. That is not a secret. The contractor did not perform as well as we wanted them to…we are proceeding to rectify the is...

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

Egypt: Sisi For Life?

...fore being elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2018 with 97% of the vote after almost all rival candidates were effectively banned. Under the current constitution, the president may only be re-elected once. Egypt’s economy has improved during Mr Sisi’s time at the helm, with the IMF projecting GDP gr...

Exxon Eyes Israel’s Leviathan

...llow US firm Noble Energy is due for start-up in Q4 this year (MEES, 5 April). Australian LNG experts Woodside pulled out of a 2015 deal to take a 25% stake in the field with FLNG very much mooted as the preferred option at the time (MEES, 23 May 2014). Exxon’s entry would signal that Israel is on ma...

Gazprom KRG Output Boost

...,000 b/d. This brings the block up to the partners’ planned development target and it is unclear whether the partners will want to expand processing facilities to push production capacity higher (MEES, 11 March 2014). Garmian is an outlier within the Kurdistan Region’s oil producing blocks in that it is lo...

QP Triple Boost

...Qatar Petroleum’s Cyprus drilling success with Exxon (see above) was only the latest of three major international successes over the past week – four if you count the football. Qatar Petroleum’s international activities were put on the backburner amid institutional reshuffling from 2014 (ME...

Aramco Advances Crude-To-Petchems Plans

...arted up in 2014.  ...