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Oil & Gas
News
39
M
ay
2008
www.read-tpt.com›
of the country; but it is uncertain when these aspects would be
ready for discussion.
Iraq commands the world’s third-largest oil reserves, totalling
more than 115 billion barrels. Its average production for
February was 2.4 million barrels per day; exports averaged
1.93 million bpd. Since the US-led invasion in March 2003,
attacks on oil infrastructure have held back production, which
recovered to pre-war levels only at the end of 2007. While there
is no accurate study on how much Iraq loses to oil smugglers,
the parliamentary committee on oil, gas, and natural resources
estimates the losses at nearly 10 per cent of total revenue:
about $5 billion a year.
■
In Tehran, on 6 April, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran
urged members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) to form a joint bank and to stop pricing oil
trades in US dollars. According to the official website of the
Iranian government, Mr Ahmadinejad advised OPEC Secretary
General Abdalla Salem el-Badri that the cartel
“should establish
a joint bank as well as having joint currency”.
The depreciation
of the American currency, in which oil is priced on the world
market, concerns producers by contributing to rising crude
prices and eroding the value of their dollar reserves. This is not
the first time that Iran has urged OPEC members to shift sales
away from the dollar. But its proposal to trade oil in a basket of
currencies is not supported by leading producer Saudi Arabia
and others.
■
Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, on
2 April backed restrictions limiting foreign investment in oil and
gas, among other key sectors such as aerospace and mining.
The legislation stipulates that private foreign companies would
need authorization to buy more than 50 per cent of a Russian
company in one of 42
‘strategic’
major industrial sectors. Foreign
state-controlled companies would need permission to acquire a
stake of more than 25 per cent in a Russian company on the
list. A commission made up of Russian economic and security
officials would review such deals. In its final reading the bill was
passed by a vote of 384-55. It goes next to the upper house, the
Federation Council, where passage is considered likely, and to
the president for his signature.
■
According to the newspaper
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
, the Russian
state-owned gas conglomerate Gazprom has lowered its gas
extraction forecasts through the year 2020. The company
announced on 2 April that, starting in twelve months, it intends
to extract only 620 to 640 billion cubic metres of gas per year. By
Gazprom’s estimates, this rate will cover only two-thirds of the
940 billion cubic metres that Russia needs to extract annually.
While company officials said that independent firms would
make up the deficit, industry experts were doubtful of the ability
of these companies to close the gap. The Russian-language
paper, noting that Gazprom is unlikely to break its contracts with
foreign companies, expects the average consumer to bear the
effects of any gas shortage.
■
A class-action lawsuit brought in Ecuador by 30,000 jungle
settlers and Indians charges that Chevron Corp (San Ramon,
California), failed to clean up billions of gallons of toxic
wastewater produced in the Amazon jungle by Texaco Petroleum
Co, a Chevron acquisition from 2001. On 2 April, a court-
appointed expert recommended that Chevron be required to
pay up to $16 billion for the alleged pollution, but there has been
no judgment as yet. Chevron denied the allegation, claiming
that Texaco, which pulled out of Ecuador in 1992 after 30 years
of operations there, met all of its environmental obligations in
a $40 million cleanup approved by the government at Quito in
1998. Chevron has also complained that Texaco was singled
out as a violator despite its minority-shareholder status in an
agreement with Petroecuador, the state-owned oil company.
■
In an effort to speed up talks over the long-delayed sales,
President Evo Morales set a 30 April deadline for the Bolivian
subsidiaries of British Petroleum, Ashmore Energy International
(also British), and Repsol (of Spain) to be returned to state
control. Each of the three companies owns some part of the
former Bolivian state energy company YPFB that was privatized
in the 1990s. Mr Morales’s nationalization in 2006 of Bolivia’s oil
and gas sector called for these subsidiaries to be sold back to
the state.
■
Aker Kvaerner ASA, of Norway, on 3 April announced a $223
million deal to provide offshore oil production equipment to
Brazil’s government-run oil company Petrobras over the next
three years. The Norwegian engineering and construction group
said that the contract of its subsidiary Aker Kvaerner Oil & Gas
do Brasil with Petrobras covers 45 subsea
‘trees’
– assemblies
of fittings placed on the seabed in the extraction of offshore oil.
The agreement also covers tool-sets and other supplies for the
equipment. The work is to be carried out at Aker Kvaerner’s
manufacturing facility in Curitiba, Brazil. The Norwegian group
also announced that it was changing its name to Aker Solutions
ASA, effective immediately, to simplify its corporate identity and
emphasize its ties with other companies in the Aker ASA group.
■
The British oil exploration company Premier Oil Plc was expected
to sign a final gas sales agreement in April with Indonesia’s
state power firm PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN), an official
of that country’s energy watchdog BPMIGAS said on 3 April.
Premier in December 2007 signed an agreement to supply 149
trillion btu of gas to PLN over the 15-year period commencing
in 2010. As reported by
The Guardian
(UK), Edi Purwanto,
deputy chief of BPMIGAS, told reporters in Jakarta that Premier
was expected to sign additional gas sales agreements with
SembCorp Gas, a
unit of SembCorp
Industries,
also
in April. The deal
follows an earlier
contract Indonesia
had with SembCorp
to supply 325
million cubic feet of
gas per day from its
gas field in Natuna.
©Richie Lyon. Image from BigStockPhoto.com