World Gas Intelligence articles from January 2007

World Gas Intelligence archives from January 2007

Qatar's regas surplus.
January 3, 2007... Qatar's decision late last year to redirect to Asia at least one-sixth, and possibly much more, of the 45 million tons per year (6 billion cubic feet per day) of LNG that it once anticipated sending to the Atlantic Basin from its six mega 7.8...

Myanmar eyes LNG to Japan, Korea.
January 3, 2007... Myanmar is likely to opt for a grassroots LNG project targeting Japan or South Korea to exploit South Korean Daewoo's discoveries in offshore Blocks A-1 and A-3. State Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (Moge) has put on a back burner plans to...

North American gas down, not out.
January 3, 2007... What a difference a year that includes two warmer-than-normal winters can make in the North American gas market. In December 2005, in the wake of the massive supply shut-ins in the Gulf of Mexico and onshore Gulf Coast that followed Hurricanes...

Enron effects still felt in US energy sector.
January 3, 2007... At the turn of the millennium, Jeffrey Skilling predicted that the asset-light, trade-any-commodity business model developed by Enron, the company he then ran, was going to reveal the staid oil majors as dinosaurs. As 2007 dawned, Skilling is...

Shah Deniz shut-in.
January 3, 2007... Production from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas field was halted within a week of its Dec. 15 opening because of a technical problem with the project's first well, president of the State Oil Co. of Azerbaijan (Socar) Rovnag Abdullaev told reporters...

Medgaz go-ahead.
January 3, 2007... A final investment decision has been taken for Medgaz, although the cost of this first direct subsea gas pipeline from Algeria to Spain has increased to [euro]900 million ($1.2 billion) from an original [euro]630 million, then later [euro]700...

Jakarta shuns Taiwan.
January 3, 2007... Indonesia further rattled relationships with long-term customers in North Asia last month by announcing that it intends to cut shipments to Taiwan after 2010, redirecting supply to Japan, as well as to its domestic market, which is facing...

New UK gas area.
January 3, 2007... A UK task force including officials from government and five key operating companies has outlined four gas hub scenarios for the purpose of evaluating whether resources West of Shetlands can be developed commercially. The West of Shetlands...

Colombian potential.
January 3, 2007... Development of Colombia's Caribbean offshore could increase the country's gas reserves enough to make it a potential LNG exporter. Although no hard data are available on the area's proven or probable gas reserves, intense exploration work,...

GdF seeks users for Montoir expansion.
January 3, 2007... Gaz de France (GdF) last week launched an open season for the planned expansion to its LNG import capacity at Montoir. The facility's current capacity is 10 billion cubic meters (7.25 million tons) per year. GdF says that, given sufficient...

Market insight: chilly LNG times.(INSIGHT)
January 3, 2007... Oil-indexed gas markets from Spain to Japan have reemerged as price leaders, offering the greatest netbacks to term sellers, as the financial return on shipments to the US and UK plunges along with domestic gas prices. Spot LNG prices worldwide...

Nuclear prospects brighten across much of the globe.(CURRENT)
January 3, 2007... Prospects for the nuclear industry haven't looked so good in 20 years, as concern about global warming and energy supply security prompts a reassessment of a technology that just a decade ago seemed to be on the way out. Across the...

Gazprom victories reassure customers, but not partners.(HORIZON)
January 3, 2007... The year 2006 ended and 2007 began with settlements to major disputes involving Gazprom that threatened customers on either side of Russia--that over gas pricing with Belarus and that with Royal Dutch Shell over the Sakhalin-2 LNG project on...

Strategy for a tight market.
January 10, 2007... Woodside Petroleum's handling of the renewals of foundation contracts for the North West Shelf (NWS) LNG venture with its original Japanese utility clients is proof positive that in the current market, sellers hold the power. The attributes of...

Turkey well supplied, but transit volumes?
January 10, 2007... In recent years Turkey has made much of its desire to become a key transit state for Caspian and Mideast gas heading to Europe, mainly through the planned Nabucco pipeline linking the Turkish network to Austria, but also to Italy and beyond via...

China set to exploit big CBM potential.
January 10, 2007... China's thirst for gas and its antipathy to high LNG prices may lead the country to become one of the world's top coalbed methane (CBM) producers by the end of this decade, industry executives said at a recent gas conference in Beijing. ...

Iran finds new Malaysian LNG partner.
January 10, 2007... The memorandum of understanding for upstream gas and LNG development signed Sunday by Iranian officials with SKS Ventures brings a powerful private Malaysian group and a new set of gas fields into play in Tehran's sometimes quixotic-appearing...

Offshore terminals lead in new England.
January 10, 2007... New England's gas supply will increase by 30% if two LNG terminals that have been approved for offshore Boston both are built and the Canaport terminal in St. John, New Brunswick, under development by Repsol YPF and Irving Oil, comes on line as...

Northwest Europe demand sluggish.
January 10, 2007... Dutch, UK and German gas demand remains sluggish due to price and weather factors, although Finnish consumption has grown. Northwest European gas prices are weak as a result, with no impact registered from this week's oil-related flare-up in...

Snohvit chills out.
January 10, 2007... The first LNG cargo delivered to a destination north of the Arctic Circle was successfully discharged on Saturday, Jan. 6--good news for the notoriously late Snohvit project, originally due for full-scale launch in 2006. Arctic Princess...

Flexibility alters supply-short LNG trade.
January 10, 2007... What happened to the glut of LNG that was supposed to inundate markets around the world, knocking prices below those of US domestic production? Demand overtook supply, and new liquefaction facilities are more costly to build and often run...

Market insight: US weather rules.(INSIGHT)
January 10, 2007... The last week of 2006 brought a large bout of bearishness to North American gas markets, as abnormally warm temperatures in much of the US squashed demand and sent gas futures and spot prices tumbling in the bidweek period that determines what...

Europe's emission market active, but to uncertain effect.(CURRENT)
January 10, 2007... The European Union's now two-year-old emission trading system (ETS) starts 2007 under something of a cloud, still dogged by uncertainty about its future direction. Prices for carbon dioxide (CO2) emission permits have fallen to new lows, with...

Gas flaring proves tough to irradicate, especially in Russia.(HORIZON)
January 10, 2007... Four-and-a-half years after the Global Gas Flaring Reduction (GGFR) partnership was set up at the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in August 2002 as the global forum for sharing public and private industry expertise and experience in...

Gazprom's backyard challenge.
January 17, 2007... A new chink in Gazprom's once formidable armor was exposed this week when BP brought Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field back on stream after some teething problems, enabling shipments to resume down the South Caucasus pipeline to Georgia. ...

Turkey reverses on path to competition.
January 17, 2007... Turkey's Energy Ministry has prepared a draft amendment that, if passed, would reverse the key provisions of the 2001 Natural Gas Market Law that aimed to end Botas' monopoly on gas imports. The amendment would effectively halt the ill-fated...

LNG looms over Venezuelan gas shift.
January 17, 2007... Last week's surprise pronouncement by President Hugo Chavez that Venezuela's constitution may soon be changed to slap the same prohibition on majority private ownership of gas reserves that already exists for oil resources won't apply for the...

Korean trading firms try E & P, eye LNG.
January 17, 2007... Robust oil and gas prices and bullish demand growth have led South Korean trading firms--most notably Daewoo, Samsung and LG International (LGI)--to diversify out of their traditional portfolios by stepping up exploration and production...

Weak Q4 brings down 2006 US LNG totals.
January 17, 2007... By almost any reckoning, 2006 was a weak year for US LNG imports, which sank about 7% from 2005, according to Department of Energy data and estimates from US Waterborne LNG Report and others. This was due in large part to an unusually warm...

4Gas buys terminal site--minus supply.
January 17, 2007... Rotterdam-based 4Gas has acquired options for all permits issued for the Vista del Sol LNG import terminal that Exxon Mobil formerly planned to build at Ingleside, Texas, near Corpus Christi, 4Gas said last week. What it--like so many...

Kuwait enlists Shell in dash for gas.
January 17, 2007... Kuwait Oil co. (KOC), the upstream arm of Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC), has devised a development plan for the 35 trillion cubic feet in nonassociated gas reserves it discovered last year and is already working with Royal Dutch Shell to develop...

Market insight: China's 2007 gas demand.(INSIGHT)
January 17, 2007... The rapid spread of residential gas usage is expected to make 2007 another year of solid growth in Chinese gas consumption overall--even though coal will almost certainly remain the preferred fuel for power generation. This demand pattern could...

Tax credits help wind energy take off big-time in US.(CURRENT)
January 17, 2007... The "green" associated with renewable power generation in the US represents not only relative friendliness to Mother Earth, but also the literal green light that's been given to wind, in particular, with Congress' extension last month of wind...

Europe's ambitious approach to an uncertain energy future.(HORIZON)
January 17, 2007... The strategic energy review and accompanying competition report released by the European Commission in Brussels last week to considerable fanfare is a noble--if not always totally persuasive--effort to tackle three major issues in a coherent...

Gazprom's tight budget.
January 24, 2007... Gazprom's board of directors last week approved a financial plan for 2007 that cuts investment slightly to $19.97 billion (529.38 billion rubles) from an earlier planned $20.06 billion (531.78 billion rubles), effectively drowning out recent...

RasGas down, now coming back up.
January 24, 2007... Qatar is preparing to restart production at its RasGas-2 LNG complex, which went down last week due to cold weather in the Mideast Gulf, WGI is told. RasGas had to shut down as much as 14 million tons (19.3 billion cubic meters) per year...

Building Shanghai LNG.
January 24, 2007... Construction has started on an LNG import terminal at the Yangshan deepwater port in Shanghai, according to local media. The 3 million ton per year terminal will be operated by 45% shareholder China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC). State...

Politics swirl round US LNG project.
January 24, 2007... With the weather having turned cold in the US Northeast and long-term gas supply fears intensifying, controversy is swirling around the proposed Broadwater LNG project in Long Island Sound. Broadwater is a joint venture of TransCanada and Royal...

Gazprom, Sonatrach eye asset swaps.
January 24, 2007... Russia and Algeria are galloping ahead with plans to expand energy cooperation, apparently unfazed by worried reactions from European leaders. A memorandum of cooperation sealed this weekend by Russian Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko and...

Vietnam's not unusual gas price dilemma.
January 24, 2007... Vietnam is wrestling with the same energy dilemmas currently afflicting many of its Asian neighbors. As the use of imported oil to generate electricity became economically undesirable over the last few years, gas turbines and fertilizer plants...

Yemen LNG update.
January 24, 2007... Yemen's first LNG train is on track for launch by end-2008 and work is proceeding apace, WGI is told--despite some financing hiccups resulting from the late 2005 replacement of US Hunt Oil with state Safer Exploration and Production Operation...

Dominican LNG hub.
January 24, 2007... The Dominican Republic is considering expanding an existing LNG regasification plant so that the country can serve as a hub for LNG destined for the US. While several variants of the scheme have been discussed, all involve construction of LNG...

Slow Qatar GTL steps.
January 24, 2007... Exxon Mobil aims to reach an initial investment agreement with state Qatar Petroleum (QP) and issue tenders for a front-end engineering and design (Feed) contract for its 154,000 barrel per day gas-to-liquids (GTL) project in Qatar--now...

Clarification.(Correction notice)
January 24, 2007... South Korea-based trading house Samsung says that the article on Korean trading firms in WGI Jan.17, p3 contains a number of inaccuracies. Samsung maintains that it is not involved in spot trading of LNG, that Malaysian state Petronas sells LNG...

Market insight: UK awash, prices sag.(INSIGHT)(Industry overview)
January 24, 2007... More gas has been offered for delivery to the UK East Coast this week than the onshore network can absorb. National Grid told those with interruptible entry capacity at Bacton and Easington, two large terminals on England's eastern North Sea...

Power sector mergers and acquisitions set record in 2006.(CURRENT)
January 24, 2007... Last year proved another busy one for merger and acquisition activity in the electricity and gas utilities sector, with the total value of deals shooting up by 52% from the record level set in 2005, to reach $298.8 billion. That's around seven...

Qatargas' Al-Suwaidi gives view on markets, Field Study.(HORIZON)
January 24, 2007... Qatargas Chairman and Chief Executive Faisal al-Suwaidi talked to Alex Schindelar, Dubai-based correspondent for Energy Intelligence, in Doha this week. Excerpts from that interview follow. WGI: Will the first phase of Qatargas-2 and the...

Iranian gas games.
January 31, 2007... This weekend's signature by Royal Dutch Shell and Spain's Repsol YPF of an upstream service, or buyback agreement with Iran's National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) on Phases 13 and 14 of the South Pars gas field to support an LNG project does little...

LNG shipping glut may last for years.
January 31, 2007... Despite continued rapid growth across the LNG supply chain, one link seems to have gotten ahead of itself--namely, shipping. Simply put, there will be too many ships for too little output in 2007--and for a number of years afterward, WGI...

New Bolivian YPFB boss faces tough job.
January 31, 2007... Bolivian state gas and oil company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales de Bolivia (YPFB) has a new president this week, the third since the country's leftist government took office a year ago. Former YPFB President Juan Carlos Ortiz resigned...

Spanish gas gallop, Italian LNG stall.
January 31, 2007... Antonio Llarden, who was last week appointed executive chairman of Spanish gas grid Enagas, inherits several ambitious pipeline and LNG projects from Antonio Gonzalez-Adalid, who has been replaced after five years in the job. Enagas, which...

Indonesia sending out mixed signals.
January 31, 2007... Foreign energy executives visiting Jakarta this month could be forgiven for thinking Indonesia is sending out mixed signals. Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono earlier this month laid out for investors a series of incentives...

Let the Kovykta battle begin.
January 31, 2007... It's now more or less official. Having gotten the majority stake it wanted in the Royal Dutch Shell-led Sakhalin-2 LNG venture, Gazprom has now turned its sites on the giant Kovykta gas field in East Siberia, dominated by BP through its TNK-BP...

Dutch merger nearer.
January 31, 2007... The two largest utilities in the Netherlands have moved one step closer to their [euro]20 billion ($26 billion) merger. Essent and Nuon began talks last autumn and have now registered a special vehicle company known as Nusent with the Dutch...

Russia, Iran toy with gas Opec idea.
January 31, 2007... Is Russia interested in forming a "Gas Opec," despite the apparent collapse of the earlier Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) and recent adamant reminders that new top-exporter Qatar is not interested (WGI May4'05, p1)? Or does Moscow just...

Market insight: chasing low netbacks.(INSIGHT)
January 31, 2007... Spot cargoes of LNG typically find destinations by chasing the highest netbacks. But an anomaly emerged this month: Netbacks in the US rose, yet the US attracted lower volumes of LNG, while netbacks in Northwest Europe plummeted, and the...

German leadership role weakened by energy policy disputes.(CURRENT)
January 31, 2007... Germany is hoping to use its current presidency of the European Union--and simultaneously of the G8--to help build political consensus on the next steps toward a common European energy and environmental policy. However, this laudable intention...

Qatar, Angola LNG eye Kyoto credits to help end flaring.(HORIZON)
January 31, 2007... Many are aware that it's theoretically possible to swap reductions in carbon emissions in developing countries for valuable emission rights in the European Union and other countries that have carbon "cap and trade" schemes. But few have...