TTN

In Brief

Share  

Opec trims oil demand forecast
LONDON: Opec has trimmed its forecast for 2006 oil demand growth and said uncertainties over Asia and North American consumption may trigger more cuts as months of near record prices make themselves felt.

Opec said in its monthly report it expected global demand to increase by 1.57 million barrels per day to 84.64 million. That compares with a projected 1.62 million bpd increase in Opec's January report.

Expansion on track
NEW YORK: Saudi Arabia will go forward with plans to expand oil production despite US goals of cutting dependence on crude from the Middle East, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the US said.
“We have already put into motion plans to increase our production to 12.5 million barrels per day,” Prince Turki Al Faisal said at a Press briefing. “That expansion is going forward without any hesitation.”  

Qatari gas sought
DUBAI: The UAE plans to buy additional gas from Qatar via the Gulf’s first cross-border gas pipeline project, a report said.
Dolphin Energy, 51 per cent owned by Abu Dhabi’s government, will next year seek to purchase an additional 1.2 billion cubic feet a day of Qatari gas, worth about $3.3 billion a year at current US market prices, a Press report quoted Dolphin chief executive officer Ahmed Ali Al Sayegh as saying. 

Balongan plants shut
JAKARTA:  Indonesian state oil company Pertamina has shut the crude distillation unit (CDU) and residue cracking unit (RCC) at its 125,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Balongan refinery, a company official said.
“We have shut the CDU for more than 20 days and the RCC for around 20 days from today,” Pertamina’s processing director, Suroso Atmomartoyo, said.

Hokkaido plant to boost capacity
TOKYO:  Nippon Oil said it expected to raise the operating rate at its fire-hit refinery in northern Japan to 70-80 per cent of capacity once all safety inspections were completed within 10 days.
Japan’s largest oil refiner cut the operating rate at the 180,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Muroran refinery’s crude distillation unit (CDU) to half its capacity after a pump in a hydrocatalytic cracker caught fire on February 5.

Cepu deal hope
JAKARTA:  Indonesia is drafting a joint operator agreement between state oil firm Pertamina and Exxon Mobil on development of the Cepu oil block, but it could take time to formulate details, a government minister said.
Talks between the two have been deadlocked over who will operate Cepu.
“We are trying to formulate a joint operator agreement (in Cepu),” State Enterprises Minister Sugiharto said.

SK maintenance
SEOUL:  South Korea's top oil refiner, SK Corp, said it was planning maintenance at three crude distillation units (CDU) this year.
The company had initially planned maintenance at two CDUs this year. Under the new schedule, the refiner plans to shut its 110,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) No 2 CDU from April 9 to May 14.

New Petechim offer
SINGAPORE:  Vietnam has cut its offer price for six-month term Bach Ho crude exports by 40 cents, narrowing the gap from lifters’ bids to less than $3 a barrel, traders said.
State oil firm Petechim made its latest offer at a premium of $5.80 a barrel to Minas quotes for April-September supplies, still sharply higher than the previous six-month contract set at a $2.05-premium, but down $2.00 from Vietnam’s opening offer.

Petchem unit move
JAKARTA: Indonesia is expected to start up a new petrochemical plant, Trans Pacific Petrochemical Indotama (TPPI), this month, starting at 60 per cent-capacity to produce aromatic and oil products, an official at Pertamina said.
TPPI, located in Tuban city in East Java province, has a capacity of 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) of condensate to feed its splitter.

OCI to build Algeria plant
CAIRO:  Egypt-based Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) and Algerian state oil and gas company Sonatrach have agreed to build a plant producing a million tonnes a year of ammonia and urea fertilisers, OCI said in a statement.
OCI will have a 51 per cent stake in the $746 million plant, to be built at Arzew in western Algeria, and Sonatrach will hold the remaining 49 per cent, it said.
It said it intended to obtain some long-term financing 'in a limited recourse structure from a combination of local Algerian and international banks'.

ConocoPhilips move
NEW YORK:  ConocoPhillips said Jim Nokes, executive vice-president of refining, marketing, supply and transportation, will retire, effective April 30.
Replacing him as head of the company's downstream business will be Jim Gallogly, current chief executive of Chevron Phillips Chemical Company.

HPCL buys Murban
SINGAPORE: Hindustan Petroleum Corp (HPCL) has bought 1.8 million barrels of Murban crude for April loading in its regular monthly tender, double what traders initially thought, sources said.
Traders said HPCLhad bought a 900,000 barrels cargo of the Abu Dhabi sour crude from European major BP, but it emerged later that the refiner had also taken another similar-sized cargo from Shell.

Maintenance set
SINGAPORE: Bharat Petroleum plans to shut a 60,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) hydrocracker at its Bombay refinery for maintenance works in March, an industry source said.
The refinery uses 70 percent of crude from the Middle East, Asia-Pacific as well as Nigeria, while domestic crude output makes up 30 per cent of its diet.

Iraq issues tender
LONDON:  Iraq has issued a buy tender for 176,000 tonnes of gas oil over four months starting in March, an official statement from the State oil Marketing Organisation said.
The tender is for gas oil with 0.7 per cent sulphur content for delivery by road tankers via Turkey between March 1 and June 30. The LPG tender is for 60,000 tonnes, also for delivery between March 1 and June 30.

$4.5m deal for Topaz unit
ABU DHABI: Topaz Energy and Marine Ltd  said its oil and gas subsidiary Adyard Abu Dhabi had been awarded a $4.5 million contract by Glasgow-based VWS Westgarth for the fabrication of two modules, an SRP Module and a Utility/Chemical Injection Module.
The contract marks the entry of Adyard into the international market for the fabrication of Floating Production, Storage and Offloading vessel (FPSO) topsides.

QP issues tender
SINGAPORE: Qatar Petroleum (QP) has issued a term tender to sell a total of 870,000 tonnes of gasoline for April-to-December 2006 supplies, an industry source said.
Of the total, QP is offering 480,000-510,000 tonnes of 90-octane gasoline and 330,000-360,000 tonnes of 97-octane gasoline for the period, the source said.

Naphtha from KPC
SINGAPORE: Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC) has launched its offer for April 2006-March 2007 term naphtha supplies at a premium $3 a tonne higher than its previous term contract, industry sources said.
KPC has offered a premium of $17.50 a tonne to Middle East spot quotes, on a free-on-board (FOB) basis, they said.
KPC’s December 2005-November 2006 naphtha term contract was set in September at a premium of $14.50 a tonne to Middle East spot quotes, or $2 a tonne higher than the previous term deal for August 2005-July 2006 supplies.

New carrier booking
LONDON:  Saudi Arabia has booked a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) spot in March, brokers said, after increasing supply to at least one oil major last week.
They said Vela International Marine had provisionally hired the Ellen Maersk to carry 285,000 tonnes of crude to the US Gulf on March 19. Saudi Arabia booked 14.4 million barrels to move spot in February, the largest spot volume to US shores since last August.

Egypt discoveries
CAIRO: Gabco and Agiba Petroleum have made two crude discoveries in Egypt which will initially produce 10,000 barrels a day (bpd), the oil ministry said.

Quick takes

Aker Kvaerner wins contract
OSLO:  Norwegian energy and engineering group Aker Kvaerner has won a contract worth 930 million crowns ($138.9 million) to supply drilling systems for two rigs being built by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Company.
“The deepwater semi-submersible drilling rigs are scheduled for delivery in the first quarter of 2008 and the third quarter of 2008,” Aker Kvaerner said in a statement.
Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering is building the two semi-submersible drilling rigs for Norwegian rig group SeaDrill.

Norway oil production rises
OSLO:  Norway's oil production rose to a preliminary 2.58 million barrels per day on average last month from 2.51 million in December, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate said.
The Directorate said that January production also included about 452,000 barrels of natural gas liquids and condensate per day. It did not give natural gas figures.
It said that Norway's final December petroleum output, including oil, gas and natural gas liquids, totalled 23.1 million standard cubic metres of oil equivalents, which corresponds to 145 million barrels of oil equivalents.
About 12.4 million cubic metres of the December total was oil, 8.3 million was natural gas and 2.4 million natural gas liquids and condensate, the directorate said.

Kazakhstan output steady
ALMATY:  Kazakhstan’s biggest oil consortium, Tengizchevroil, said its 2006 output would remain steady at 13.5 million tonnes (280,000 barrels per day), almost unchanged from the previous year.
The Chevron-led consortium, which operates the giant onshore Tengiz field in western Kazakhstan, said its 2005 production had been 13.56 million tonnes.

Marubeni vies for key project
BOGOTA, Colombia:  Glencore International, BP Corp North America, Marubeni and Petrobras have qualified to bid to be partners in an $850 million expansion of Colombia's Cartagena oil refinery, state-owned Ecopetrol said.
Ecopetrol plans to choose a partner in the first half of this year for the project.

ENVIRONMENTAL EYE

Japan may budget $103m for carbon credits
TOKYO: Japan's environment ministry is looking for a budget of 12.2 billion yen ($103 million) to buy carbon emission credits under arrangements aimed at stopping global warming, government and industry officials said.
The Ministry of the Environment has asked parliament to revise a regulatory law in the fiscal year starting April to allow the government to buy up to 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission credits over the next five years, a government official said.
'The fund will be set up within a year after the revision,' the official with the environment ministry said.
'The government can start buying carbon credits directly from projects or indirectly from Japanese companies -- meaning it will have to buy them from the market.'
Government affiliate New Energy and Industry Development Organisation (NEDO) will administer the fund set up under the budget, a spokeswoman said.
Japan aims to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming by six per cent from 1990 levels by 2012 under the UN-led Kyoto Protocol.
However, emission volume had increased 7.4 per cent as of the end of March 2005 from the 1990 levels.
The increase was partly due to prolonged shutdowns of nuclear power plants in 2003 after a safety scandal and the resulting increase in the use of fossil fuels at thermal power plants.
Such increases in carbon dioxide emissions are a dilemma for the government, but they give companies business opportunities in the emerging market for emission rights, which Barclays Capital has predicted could grow to 40 billion euros ($48.5 billion) a year.
Japanese trading firms have invested in overseas projects to secure carbon dioxide credits for their own use in cutting emissions and for resale to other firms.
They expect Japan will need as much as 800 million tonnes from 2008 to 2012 to meet the Kyoto target, far more than the government's estimate of 100-200 million tonnes.

Spacer