International Petroleum Finance articles from March 2006

International Petroleum Finance archives from March 2006

The measure's the thing.
March 1, 2006... Eni Chief Executive Paolo Scaroni attracted a lot of attention last month when he suggested, in a speech in London, that Big Oil's current travails with investment and reserve replacement are attributable to an obsession with short-term...

Big Oil wows the Big Apple.
March 1, 2006... Big Oil came to the Big Apple earlier this month, with top executives from Exxon Mobil and Chevron in New York on successive days for presentations to Wall Street analysts. For both companies, the meetings were short on news but long on...

Chevron, BP sign mammoth rig deals with Transocean.
March 1, 2006... Chevron has grasped the nettle in its efforts to deal with tightness in the rig market with the award of a contract to Transoeean that will see the deepwater specialists build a new state-of-the-art $650 million deepwater drillship. The major...

Rosneft listing plans hit by CFO's departure.
March 1, 2006... The planning for Rosneft's initial public offering (IPO) was thrown into turmoil last month by the unexpected ouster of the Russian state producer's chief financial officer, Sergei Alexeyev. Observers expect Alexeyev's departure to inevitably...

Merger mania grips Europe's utilities.
March 1, 2006... Merger mania has taken hold of Europe's gas and power companies, amid a flurry of friendly, hostile and counter bids, with some of the region's biggest players eyeing one another up as potential partners or targets--among them Spain's Endesa...

Eni output surge leaves rivals trailing.
March 1, 2006... Full-year results from Europe's leading integrated majors have by and large echoed the trend set by their US counterparts--an obvious lift to earnings from high prices, and expenditure creeping higher, partly as a result of service sector...

Australian players work towards global goals.
March 1, 2006... Profits are rising down under, with Australia's three big upstream players--Woodside Petroleum, BHP Billiton and Santos--surfing high on growing production and high energy prices. But while each firm is now trying to make their mark on the...

Smart strategy keeps BG riding high.
March 1, 2006... BG Group has become the darling of the investment community. Five or ten years ago, the UK press would regularly speculate on an imminent takeover by Royal Dutch Shell or some other leading major. Now with its upstream and LNG strengths, BG...

Saudis pick Total for Jubail.
March 1, 2006... Saudi Aramco has chosen France's Total as its partner in a planned new export refinery at Jubail, on Saudi Arabia's east coast, sources tell IPF. The decision comes only months after Aramco unveiled plans to build the 400,000-450,000 b/d...

Qatar eyes overseas assets.
March 1, 2006... Qatar is starting to develop a strategy for its new foreign investment unit, Qatar Petroleum International (QPI), according to the head of the project's steering committee, Faisal al-Suwaidi. The new state-owned company will follow in the...

Tupras deals in doubt.
March 1, 2006... Uncertainty continues to swirl around the privatization of Turkey' s Tupras, amid rumblings about unfair play in the March 2005 sale of a 14.76% stake. The more recent purchase of a 51% stake in the refiner by a consortium led by Turkey's Koc...

North Sea spending up.
March 1, 2006... The UK Offshore Operators Association (UKOOA) has indicated for the first time that the UK government's windfall tax on North Sea oil profits will have a limited short-term impact on offshore investment. But the industry body sees several...

Neste enters MN bidding.
March 1, 2006... Finland's Neste Oil has emerged as the latest contender to buy Yukos' controlling 53.7% stake in Lithuanian oil refiner Mazeikin Nafta (MN), which combines the only refinery in the Baltic states with the Butinge oil terminal. The Finnish...

Udmurtneft race hots up.
March 1, 2006... The battle for control of TNK-BP's Udmurtneft, which produces 120,000 b/d of crude in the Russian republic of Udmurtia, is hotting up. With about 10 contenders lining up, including Russian and foreign bidders, the price tag for the company has...

Pipe row looms for Transneft.
March 1, 2006... Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft has asked creditors for a massive unsecured loan to finance its planned East Siberian pipeline, even as environmental activists step up attacks on the line's proposed route. Transneft has approached several...

El Paso vows to end losses.
March 1, 2006... After five years of heavy losses, El Paso Chief Executive Doug Foshee is pledging that the company will get back in the black this year and produce earnings of more than $600 million. "Our days of consistently reporting losses are done," Foshee...

Marubeni buys Gulf assets.
March 1, 2006... Pioneer Natural Resources has agreed to sell most of its deepwater Gulf of Mexico assets to Japanese trading company Marubeni Corp. for $1.3 billion in cash. The sale includes the US independent's interest in three producing projects,...

Petroecuador's cash crisis.
March 1, 2006... State-owned Petroecuador is facing a financial crisis so grave that it could force it to stop operating, according to the company's outgoing President Luis Roman, who resigned Feb. 9 after less than a year on the job because of differences with...

Total inks China gas deal.
March 1, 2006... Total has signed a major production sharing contract with PetroChina covering natural gas resources in the South Sulige Block of the Ordos Basin, Inner Mongolia. The contract covers evaluation, development and production over a 2,390 sq km...

Indian budget blues.
March 1, 2006... Indian oil and gas firms that were counting on retail pricing reforms and a revised subsidy-sharing scheme have been left largely high and dry in the government's 2006-07 budget. The most significant measure was a 38% increase on an...

Oil price slide hits equities hard in February.(EQUITY MARKETS)
March 1, 2006... February was not a kind month to oil investors. While the broader S&P 500 Index moved higher throughout the month, only to give up most of the month-long gains on the last day of February, the IPF Index ended February sharply lower, down 6.7%....

Analysts split on whether Gazprom will dampen rampant RTS.(EMERGING MARKETS)
March 1, 2006... As Russian gas giant Gazprom prepares for its Mar. 15 entry into the country's official RTS index at a 15% market weighting, some analysts are suggesting that it may actually weigh on the performance of the benchmark index, which has been...