International Petroleum Finance articles from April 2008

International Petroleum Finance archives from April 2008

TNK-BP's cloudy future.
April 1, 2008... Tax raids, the arrest of an employee on charges of industrial espionage and wrangles over the visa status of 148 other TNK-BP staff all looked like depressingly familiar Kremlin tactics aimed at wresting control of BP's Russian joint venture...

SWF debate heats up as China buys total stake.
April 1, 2008... The disclosure early this month that China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (Safe) has spent $2.8 billion on a 1.6% stake in French major Total was just the latest in a slew of recent developments surrounding state-backed overseas...

Majors up spending in bid to raise output.
April 1, 2008... In the face of rocketing upstream costs, a shortage of skilled labor and the negative impact of high oil prices on volumes from production sharing contracts, merely maintaining output--let alone increasing volumes--is proving a tough task for...

Green lobby challenges West Coast LNG projects.
April 1, 2008... Getting planning permission for LNG receiving terminals on the US West Coast, where there is a relatively strong and vocal environmental lobby, has always been an uphill battle. A shift in tactics by a well-organized Green coalition in...

Reserves replacement merry-go-round.
April 1, 2008... What a difference a year makes. Last year, Royal Dutch Shell was reporting the best reserves replacement rate (RRR) of its peers in its filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), at 154% for 2006. Its SEC number for 2007 was...

Windfall tax hits CNOOC, PetroChina earnings.
April 1, 2008... Despite high oil prices, China's two big state upstream companies, PetroChina and China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), found it tough to increase profitability last year, as rising costs, windfall taxes and slowing output growth combined...

Gulf of Mexico finds fall to 10-year low: Woodmac.
April 1, 2008... Reserves of just 553 million barrels of oil equivalent were discovered in the deepwater US Gulf of Mexico last year, less than half the amount found in 2006, making the 2007 contribution to the basin's reserve base the lowest in 10 years,...

Value of upstream M&A deals fell again in 2007.
April 1, 2008... There were 338 significant upstream transactions in 2007, up from 296 in 2006, but despite the record number of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) last year, the combined value of those transactions fell 4% to $153.7 billion, according to the 2007...

IOCs and service firms adjust to changing roles.
April 1, 2008... There has been much talk recently about the changing relationship between international oil companies (IOC) and increasingly assertive national oil companies (NOC), but less about how this may affect the world's big oil service companies. ...

Russian investment law.(IN BRIEF)
April 1, 2008... Draft legislation defining the rules for foreign investment in strategic sectors of the Russian economy, including oil and gas, was approved in a third and final reading by the lower house of parliament Apr. 2. The draft has to be approved...

Venezuelan windfall tax.(IN BRIEF)
April 1, 2008... Venezuelan lawmakers early this month gave initial approval to a bill introducing a new windfall profit tax on oil companies. The windfall tax proposal will reportedly kick in when the average price for Brent crude exceeds $70/bbl in any...

Mexico oil law stalled.(IN BRIEF)
April 1, 2008... Attempts to reform Mexico's oil industry appear to be dead in the water, with lawmakers seemingly unable to agree anything before the current congressional session closes at the end of the month. Mexican President Felipe Calderon had hoped to...

Shell's Iraq gas offer.(IN BRIEF)
April 1, 2008... Energy Intelligence learned that Royal Dutch Shell has submitted a proposal to the Iraqi oil ministry to produce about 500 MMcf/d of gas from southern oil fields where most associated gas is currently flared. The proposal is independent of the...

Sinopec's So-So profits.(IN BRIEF)
April 1, 2008... Hong Kong-listed Chinese state oil and gas group Sinopec reported a 5.5% rise in annual net profits to 56.5 billion yuan ($8.06 billion). The downstream-focused company more than halved its refining losses, from $3.9 billion in 2006 to $1.9...

Australian E&P inflation.(IN BRIEF)
April 1, 2008... Australian exploration spending soared 58% to A$2.6 billion (US$2.4 billion) in 2007, but the number of wells drilled fell 7% to 111, according to new data from the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, which has been...

Gazprom hikes capex.(IN BRIEF)
April 1, 2008... Russia's Gazprom is reportedly planning to increase its investment in domestic gas over the next two years, shifting its strategy back towards its core business at the expense of big acquisitions. Gazprom has faced criticism in recent years for...

Shell sells Algeria stakes.(IN BRIEF)
April 1, 2008... Liwa Energy, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi's state Mubadala Development, bought 20% stakes in two Algerian production sharing contracts (PSC) covering six contract areas--328b, 352d, 362b and 345, 346 and 322b--from Royal Dutch Shell for an...

Bahrain awards contracts.(IN BRIEF)
April 1, 2008... Bahrain has ratified three offshore exploration contracts with two international oil companies and has short-listed three companies to boost production at the aging Awali field, according to Bahrain Petroleum Co. Eight companies bid for Awali,...

Petrobras Japan deal.(IN BRIEF)
April 1, 2008... Brazil's state-controlled Petrobras completed its $55 million purchase of a majority stake in the 100,000 b/d Nansei Sekiyu refinery on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa from Exxon Mobil's Japanese downstream subsidiary, TonenGeneral...

Baltic pipe scrapped.(IN BRIEF)
April 1, 2008... Moscow appears to have buried plans to build a crude oil pipeline from the Belarus border to the Russian Baltic port of Primorsk. Russia's Industry and Energy Ministry told the Kremlin that now is the wrong time to build the pipeline, known as...

Weak US refining outlook hits oil equities in March, first quarter.(EQUITY MARKETS)
April 1, 2008... Rising oil prices pushed integrated oil company stocks up 20% or more last year. But in the first three months of 2008, oil equities slightly underperformed the broader market. A weaker downstream business in the US and oil prices that appear...

Australian range and Lundin bet heavily on Somalia's Puntland.(EMERGING MARKETS)
April 1, 2008... Few exploration hotspots come more exotic or extreme than war-torn Somalia. Yet Australian junior Range Resources is launching a seismic program there in May and intends to spud its first well in July. Since cutting a deal in 2005 with the...