World Gas Intelligence articles from June 2002

World Gas Intelligence archives from June 2002

Turkey's take-or-pay trials.(Brief Article)
June 5, 2002... Thanks to Russian foot-dragging on the Blue Stream pipeline, Turkey may well avoid any onerous take-or-pay penalties for the time being, even though it does not appear to have succeeded in renegotiating lower volumes and prices with its...

LNG rule writing drags in Mexico.(liquefied natural gas)(Brief Article)
June 5, 2002... At first, it seemed a simple, if expensive plan, to build LNG receiving terminals on both Mexico's Pacific and its Gulf of Mexico coasts. Because the gas was to be imported, it would not be subject to the usual nationalistic restrictions...

Progress in greater sunrise LNG dispute.(Phillips Petroleum)(Brief Article)
June 5, 2002... Phillips has tacitly agreed to go ahead with a Royal Dutch/Shell-sponsored Floating LNG (FLNG) facility to develop the Greater Sunrise gas fields in the Timor Sea, in return for agreement by Australia's Woodside to review the possibility of...

Fenosa, Oman deal short-circuits Shell.(Union Fenosa)(Brief Article)
June 5, 2002... Union Fenosa has joined forces with Oman in a strategic alliance that envisages the Spanish power generator playing a central role in the construction of a third LNG train in the Sultanate and buying at least half of the output when the 3.3...

Tanker order book keeps growing.(Brief Article)
June 5, 2002... Talk of potential overcapacity in LNG shipping has not deterred shipping players (WGI Jan.2,p8). Currently, the order book stands at 64 tankers and counting, while the number in service is still 128, according to Norwegian shipbrokers...

Statoil outlines far-flung ambitions.(Brief Article)
June 5, 2002... Statoil is aiming to take its gas activities far beyond its base business of supplying large European customers with Norwegian gas under long-term contracts, Executive Vice President and head of the company's gas business Peter Mellbye told...

Caracas snubs Exxon.(Exxon Mobil excluded from North Paria offshore gas project)(Brief Article)
June 5, 2002... The government of Venezuela has decided to exclude Exxon Mobil from the North Paria offshore gas project, choosing instead only Royal Dutch/Shell and Nippon Mitsubishi to partner with state Petroleos de Venezuela in the long-delayed venture,...

Norsk Hydro sells to Dutch greenhouses.(Brief Article)
June 5, 2002... Norwegian producer Norsk Hydro has announced that it has an agreement to supply some 560 greenhouses in the Netherlands with nearly 1 billion cubic meters per year of gas. This is Norsk Hydro's first large supply deal since Oslo abolished...

Market insight: disappearing desks. (Insight).(gas futures)(Statistical Data Included)
June 5, 2002... US gas prices have stalled. The June gas futures contract at the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) went off the board last week at $3.420 per million Btu, only slightly above the prior month's close and 31.8 cents below the June 2001...

Italy's attraction persists as competition enters power market. (Current).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 5, 2002... Italy's energy sector has already undergone massive upheaval as Rome works to comply with the European Union gas and power directives, including the creation of an independent electricity grid operator and regulator, as well as the spin-off of...

Russia plays its trumps in the big Central Asian gas game. (Horizon).(Brief Article)
June 5, 2002... Both the political and corporate logic of Moscow's push this spring for an alliance of former Soviet gas producers is becoming increasingly evident--as is the tremendous power that Russia wields to force the concept on neighboring Kazakstan,...

LNG tips US market.(Liquefied natural gas)(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)(Statistical Data Included)
June 12, 2002... Moves by suppliers to get excess gas out of glutted Asian markets coincided this spring with the reemergence of willing US buyers, as falling North American production pushed US gas prices up. In fact, it looks increasingly as if the amount of...

Oil price link shed in Statoil's UK deal.(Statoil and Centrica sign contract)(Brief Article)
June 12, 2002... A 10-year, 5 billion cubic meter per year (483.5 million cubic feet per day) contract signed this week by Norway's Statoil and the UK's largest gas supplier, Centrica, scores two important firsts: It's Centrica's first large take-or-pay...

Norway's Polish sales prospects fade.(Statoil supply agreement with Poland may not materialize)(Brief Article)
June 12, 2002... While Norway's Statoil moves to expand gas sales to the UK, a previous agreement to supply Poland with gas from 2008 onwards looks less and less likely ever to materialize (pl). And if the Norwegian deal falls apart, so might a similar Danish...

Nigerian progress, Angolan delays on LNG.(Brief Article)
June 12, 2002... Plans for additional LNG projects and pipeline schemes in Nigeria are progressing, albeit slowly, while the planned start-up of West African challenger Angola's sole LNG project has been pushed back yet another year. Operator Chevron...

Ukraine pipes getting Russian, German help.(Brief Article)
June 12, 2002... In a series of high-level meetings early this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian leader Leonid Kuchma, and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder all put their imprimaturs on plans to set up an international consortium to modernize...

Venezuela seeks US LNG supply role.(Brief Article)
June 12, 2002... Venezuela has ended months of uncertainty by naming the companies that will be authorized to develop the long awaited North Paria project that would turn the country into an LNG exporter. The question now is whether the gesture is too...

Egypt consolidation.(Unioin Fenosa export project)(Brief Article)
June 12, 2002... Signs are finally emerging of the long-predicted cooperation between major gas producers in Egypt and the Egypt LNG export project led by Union Fenosa. The Spanish utility wants gas for a second train, and sources say that Fenosa is talking to...

Indian LNG delay.(liquefied natural gas project delayed at least four years)(Brief Article)
June 12, 2002... A key LNG project in southern India put forward by the apparently powerful team of Malaysian state Petronas, state Indian Oil Corp. (IOC), and BP has been pushed back for at least four years (WGI Feb.20,p3). The LNG project at Kakinada in...

Mulva is Petroleum Executive of the Year.(James Mulva)(Brief Article)
June 12, 2002... James Mulva, chairman and chief executive of Phillips Petroleum, will be the recipient of the 2002 Petroleum Executive of the Year Award, EIG President Thomas Wallin announced. Mulva was chosen for this prestigious award by other senior...

Market insight: Asian surplus goes spot. (Insight).(Statistical Data Included)
June 12, 2002... After noting that Malaysia's third, so-called Tiga LNG train would be up and running by next year, Petronas President Hassan Marican told the Asian Oil & Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur this week that the country has no further need "to go out...

Liquidity low, capacity still high in reeling US power markets. (Current).(Brief Article)
June 12, 2002... The crisis of investor and regulatory confidence that has US energy merchants reeling is taking a heavy toll on liquidity in power markets, traders and brokers report. It is also leading to project cancellations on all sides, as companies...

Endorsements for Turkey in role of Caspian gas corridor. (Horizon).(Statistical Data Included)
June 12, 2002... Turkey may just manage to absorb booked gas imports without incurring penalties this year and next, thanks to project delays and minimizing of purchases in line with contract tolerances (WGI Jun.5,p1). But by 2005, that probably won't be...

Mexico's lively reform debate.
June 19, 2002... There is movement at last on both the natural gas opening and electricity reform fronts in Mexico, after 18 months of empty rhetoric. Congress is still hostile to both these initiatives of President Vicente Fox, but at least specifics are now...

Egypt's Arab Pipeline project progressing.
June 19, 2002... Momentum continues to build behind plans for what has now been dubbed the Arab Gas Pipeline, to take up to 10 billion cubic meters per year, or nearly 1 billion cubic feet per day, of Egypt's increasingly plentiful gas to Jordan, Syria,...

Norway gains on Russia in gas sales.
June 19, 2002... Norwegian production of marketable gas came in at 5.8 billion cubic meters (6.8 billion cubic feet per day) in April, up a striking 51% from a year earlier. This means that Norway is gaining ground on Europe's number-one gas supplier,...

Canadian pipeline outruns Alaska rival.
June 19, 2002... A group of four Canadian producers is pushing ahead with plans for a gas pipeline from Canada's Far North to markets in the South, in a bid to consolidate a crucial head start over the rival Alaska pipeline scheme, which continues to look like...

EdF expands as US power firms contract.
June 19, 2002... American Electric Power (AEP) has agreed to sell UK retail energy business Seeboard to Electricite de France (EdF) for just over $2 billion, increasing the French state company's UK gas and power customer base by two-thirds to 5 million, at an...

Petroplus looking at LNG imports for UK.
June 19, 2002... Large Norwegian producers aren't the only ones hoping to help supply the UK with imported gas when its own production goes into decline later this decade (WGI Jun. 12,p1). Netherlands-based Petroplus, one of Europe's few independent refiners,...

LNG project malaise.
June 19, 2002... Still more delay is likely for two Asian-oriented LNG projects that have been long in the planning but failed to take off, despite having initial sales agreements: Yemen LNG and Greater Sunrise. Total Fina Elf has asked the Yemeni...

Gazprom in Poland.
June 19, 2002... Although resolution of the Russo-Ukrainian gas war does away with the need for the so-called Polish bypass with which the Yamal-to-Europe pipeline was originally linked, Russia's Gazprom is pressing ahead on long-delayed plans to increase the...

Hungarian hiatus.(Brief Article)
June 19, 2002... Hungarian oil and gas group Mol says that the preferred candidate to buy its gas business has pulled out of talks, and that sale of the unit has been postponed until the government sorts out gas-pricing issues. State Hungarian Development...

Market insight: marginal netbacks. (Insight).
June 19, 2002... Faltering demand in Japan and South Korea and abundant spare liquefaction capacity have turned some of Asia's traditional LNG suppliers into spot sellers on the distant US East Coast market--despite what WGI calculates to be meager netbacks on...

Deregulated retail power fails to attract US consumers. (Current).
June 19, 2002... The grand vision of an unregulated retail electricity market across all 50 US states seems now to have had no more substance than a bolt of lightening. And the politicians and regulators weren't the problem. Rather, it seems that the targeted...

Emissions trading launched in Europe, US--on separate tracks. (Horizon).
June 19, 2002... The first faint life signs can be detected on both sides of the Atlantic from national and even cross-border markets in greenhouse gas emissions. But a genuinely global market that spans the oceans still looks to be some years off. The...

Centrica's buying spree.(Centrica to buy natural gas from Gasunie)(Brief Article)
June 26, 2002... The pace at which the world's gas suppliers are lining up to serve the UK as it turns into a net importer is picking up rapidly. This week, even as Exxon and Qatar were laying out grandiose plans for LNG shipments to Europe's largest gas...

US deepwater Gulf growth stalling out.(new natural gas production forecast for Gulf of Mexico)(Brief Article)
June 26, 2002... These are boom times for gas production from the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But evidence suggests that a slowdown looms for the play. Since deepwater production has been of the few growth spots in the shriveling US gas patch over the...

Qatar accepts Exxon's UK LNG plan.(Exxon Mobil to supply Qatari LNG to UK)(Brief Article)
June 26, 2002... State Qatar Petroleum (QP) this week agreed to take up Exxon Mobil's proposal to supply Qatari LNG to the UK, first reported in WGI last month (WGI May22,p1). Under the terms of this week's heads of agreement, Qatari LNG shipments to the UK...

Dynegydirect latest US trading casualty.(Dynegey shuts down its Dynegydirect electronic trading system)(Brief Article)
June 26, 2002... US-based Dynegy has followed Enron into many businesses--power trading, telecommunications, online trading. And the troubled energy merchant continues to follow its once cross-town rival, this time by shutting down its Dynegydirect electronic...

Iran's LNG muddle still muddled.(Brief Article)
June 26, 2002... In stark contrast to its neighbor Qatar, which this week signed yet-another landmark deal, Iran's efforts to break into the global LNG business appear more than a little muddled (p2). LNG success for Iran hinges on improving its track record at...

Australia's Gorgon gas debate heats up.(Gorgon area gas field development plans)(Brief Article)
June 26, 2002... Australian officials are predicting a decision soon on development of the ChevronTexaco-operated Gorgon-area gas fields. The reason, in a word, is China. Beijing is poised to announce the winner of the tender to supply its first LNG...

Troubled Yemen LNG.(project in jeopardy)(Brief Article)
June 26, 2002... A four-year extension granted to Yemen LNG last week has done little to boost shareholder confidence. Exxon Mobil, which held a 14.51% stake, is pulling out anyway, and US Hunt Oil, with 15.11%, is expected to follow suit. More worryingly,...

Slow Turkish opening.(Turkey develops ruels for electricity and natural gas markets)(Brief Article)
June 26, 2002... Turkey's new Energy Market Regulatory Authority has published and invited comment on implementing legislation covering operation of the electricity market and licensing regulations for the gas market, adding meat to its May 2001 Natural Gas...

Tractebel snatches Enron LNG tanker.(Brief Article)
June 26, 2002... French-Belgian energy firm Tractebel has won the bidding to take over Enron's long-term charter on the 87,600 cubic meter LNG tanker Hoegh Galleon, bankruptcy court filings reveal (WGI Apr.3,p3). Provided the bankruptcy court approves the...

Market insight: Dutch deja vu. (Insight).(electricity and natural gas markets troubled in Netherlands)(Industry Overview)
June 26, 2002... Days after Dutch energy regulators signaled their determination to get to grips with last summer's electricity price spikes and gas market constraints, it happened all over again. Soaring temperatures early last week were matched by soaring...

Japan finds liberalizing a stagnant market tough going. (Current).(electricity market finally being deregulated, but demand is now falling)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 26, 2002... A period of flat to negative energy demand growth is hardly the best of times for deregulating a country's electricity industry. But that's basically how it is in Japan, as the country's famously slow decision-making machinery finally delivers...

Tractebel: a Euro firm poised for expansion in US power. (Horizon).(Brief Article)(Company Profile)
June 26, 2002... Despite all the recent turbulence, US power markets retain a strong appeal for many European energy firms. In fact, by forcing US-based companies to expand more slowly and even put domestic assets on the block, the trauma may yet add to the...