Petroleum Intelligence Weekly articles from December 2007

Petroleum Intelligence Weekly archives from December 2007

Bush holds firm, but US warms to carbon caps.
December 17, 2007... The administration of President George W. Bush held firm on its long-standing policy of rejecting mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions at a UN climate change conference in Bali last week, but optimism abounds over a post-Bush carbon...

Forecasters converging on 100 million B/D.
December 17, 2007... While predictions by Total Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie and others that world oil production is facing a limit of 100 million barrels per day or less have received a lot of attention lately, new long-term energy forecasts from major...

Oil markets in 2007--predictably Unpredictable.
December 17, 2007... Oil markets have been predictably unpredictable in 2007. At times, crude futures seemed to be following a pattern established in recent years, while at others they departed from this script, moving--almost literally--into uncharted territory....

Kashagan casts shadow over scaroni's success.
December 17, 2007... Early next year the Italian government will decide whether to reappoint Eni Chief Executive Paolo Scaroni for a second three-year term. The powers that be in Rome face a difficult choice: Scaroni has pursued, with some success, a policy of...

Asian premium gives way to new concerns.
December 17, 2007... Asian buyers used to protest strongly at the premium they paid for Mideast crude--angered that poorer, emerging economies in Asia were charged more than wealthy customers in Europe and the Americas. No more it seems. For most of this past year,...

Exxon floats new idea for US gas market.
December 17, 2007... Exxon Mobil, and before its merger Exxon, has always been known as the engineers' company, but its latest eye-catching project proposal owes at least as much to market savvy as to technological and engineering expertise. The US supermajor is...

Canada set for slump in spending.
December 17, 2007... Although Canada's oil sands retain huge long-term appeal to would-be investors, the country is set to see a 12% decline in upstream spending next year, a new report from investment bank Lehman Brothers suggests, thanks to the generally poor...

Corporate.(GENERAL)(StatoilHydro)(Brief article)
December 17, 2007... CORPORATE--Further underlining the problems the majors are having with volume growth, Norway's newly merged StatoilHydro has told investors that it will fall short of this year's output target and likely deliver an increase in production of...

Forecasts.(GENERAL)(Brief article)
December 17, 2007... FORECASTS--The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has again revised its 2008 oil price forecast, raising its projection for US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) next year to $84.83/bbl--up almost $5/bbl from last month's forecast...

Formula prices.(GENERAL)
December 17, 2007... FORMULA PRICES--Saudi Arabia drastically tightened its formula price discounts for January crude going to the US, undoing the steep December discounts. State Saudi Aramco effectively made Arab Light and Extra Light to Asia more expensive, while...

Angola.(COUNTRIES)
December 17, 2007... ANGOLA -- After years of delay and drawn-out negotiation, state Sonangol, Chevron, Total, BP and Eni have taken the final decision to move ahead with the country's first LNG project. The Angola LNG (ALNG) project, which was approved by the...

India.(COUNTRIES)(Brief article)
December 17, 2007... INDIA -- Fifty-seven oil and gas blocks have been offered in the seventh bid round to be held under the country's New Exploration Licensing Policy (Nelp). Bids are due Apr. 11 next year, with the winners to be decided by June. Of the 57 blocks...

Iran.(COUNTRIES)(Brief article)
December 17, 2007... IRAN -- Tehran has awarded a $2 billion contract to China's state Sinopec to develop the onshore Yadavaran field, which has estimated recoverable reserves of some 3.2 billion bbl of oil and a targeted production plateau of 300,000 b/d (PIW...

Iran.(COUNTRIES)(Brief article)
December 17, 2007... IRAN -- Imports of gasoline, which cost Tehran more than $5 billion in much-needed revenues last year, have shrunk dramatically since the government introduced measures in June to ration internal consumption (PIW Jun.25,p4). According to Gulf...

Russia.(COUNTRIES)(Statistical data)
December 17, 2007... RUSSIA -- Crude exports to destinations outside the former Soviet Union dipped to 3.886 million b/d in November, down from 3.941 million b/d in October (PIW Nov.12,p8). The drop accompanied a broad shift away from seaborne exports in favor of...

Russia.(COUNTRIES)(Brief article)
December 17, 2007... RUSSIA -- Exploration drilling carried out by Rosneft and BP has failed again this year to discover commercial quantities of hydrocarbons in the Sakhalin shelf region, raising questions as to whether the area's overall reserves have been...

United States.(COUNTRIES)(Brief article)
December 17, 2007... UNITED STATES -- Royal Dutch Shell and Saudi Aramco have formally broken ground on the 325,000 b/d expansion of their Motiva Port Arthur refinery in Texas, a $7 billion project that will make the facility the largest refinery in the US at...

Uzbekistan.(COUNTRIES)
December 17, 2007... UZBEKISTAN -- Malaysia's state Petronas has signed an agreement for two exploration blocks, becoming the latest in a long line of Asian companies operating in the former Soviet state. Petronas will take over next year as 100% owner and operator...

Yemen.(COUNTRIES)
December 17, 2007... YEMEN -- Some 23 companies have applied for prequalification in the country's first all-offshore licensing round, bucking the recent trend in the Middle East, which has seen little interest in offshore acreage offered by Syria and Cyprus (PIW...

Weak response to libya's latest round.(What's New Around the World)
December 17, 2007... Libya last week announced the results of its fourth Epsa-4 licensing round and revealed that Petro-Canada had become the latest upstream operator in Libya, after Eni and Occidental, to convert its old upstream agreements to the new Epsa-4...

A helping hand.(Marketview)
December 17, 2007... WASHINGTON -- Oil markets received a shot in the arm last week from measures taken by the US Federal Reserve and other central banks, which created a short-term lending vehicle to ease credit worries. The US stock market initially rallied on...

PIW market indicators.(Statistical table)
December 17, 2007... PIW Market Indicators 1 Week 2 Weeks 4 Weeks Spot Crude Ago Ago Ago Opec Basket $85.18 $84.97 $90.71 UK Brent (Dtd.) 89.20 88.97 94.12 UK B-wave...

With or without IOCs, Iran goes for growth.
December 24, 2007... Iran is confident it will reach its targeted oil production capacity of 4.5 million barrels per day within the next four years and has plans to increase capacity further to 5.3 million b/d by 2013-14, according to the country's oil minister,...

US energy bill a mixed bag of compromises.
December 24, 2007... The US has got a new energy bill, but not the one its Democratic sponsors wanted, or the one, some critics argue, the country really needs. The eviscerated version of the original bill signed into law by President George W. Bush Dec. 19...

Gazprom gets its inside man at the Kremlin.
December 24, 2007... Russian President Vladimir Putin's endorsement of the candidacy of Gazprom board Chairman Dmitry Medvedev has drained most of the drama from the country's March presidential elections and set in stone the indivisible relationship between the...

Price fall no sure bet, despite looser balances.
December 24, 2007... The past 12 months have been self-evidently bullish for oil markets, but what does the next year hold in store? Despite the fact that year-end OECD stocks look a little thin, and that non-OECD demand growth is expected to hold up in the years...

Light crude decline vexes Asian refiners.
December 24, 2007... Stability in the oil world tends to be about balance, which is why Asian crude oil markets could be in for a bumpy ride in 2008. The problem is that the region's benchmark light, sweet grades, such as Malaysia's Tapis, Australia's Cossack and...

Mexican states block path to energy reform.
December 24, 2007... Christmas has come early for Mexico's state governors, who learned last week that the federal government is planning to hand them billions of pesos in windfall payments as a result of this year's high oil prices. Such federal handouts are...

Weak gas hits North American spending plans.
December 24, 2007... The US and Canada are not expected to be hotbeds of exploration activity next year. While there will be pockets of strong drilling activity--mainly the Rocky Mountain region and the Barnett Shale play of North Texas--few new upstream dollars...

Environment.(GENERAL)(Brief article)
December 24, 2007... ENVIRONMENT--Ministers from over 180 countries clinched an agreement at UN-led talks in Bali last week to launch negotiations on a new pact to fight climate change. The deal followed a last-minute U-turn by the US, which had wanted firmer...

IEA.(GENERAL)(The International Energy Agency )
December 24, 2007... IEA--The International Energy Agency (IEA) has sent a gentler message to oil markets in its latest monthly report than has been the case for much of the year, with notably less finger-pointing at Opec--or for that matter speculators--as the...

Industry restructuring.(GENERAL)
December 24, 2007... INDUSTRY RESTRUCTURING--The US' National Oilwell Varco is to acquire Grant Prideco in a $7.4 billion cash and stock deal that will make National Oilwell a bigger player in the global drill-pipe and drill-bit business. State-owned Korea National...

OPEC.(GENERAL)
December 24, 2007... OPEC--Despite raising its demand numbers modestly and cutting back on expected non-Opec supply estimates, Opec maintained a cautious attitude on oil balances in its latest monthly market report, because of perceived direct threats to the global...

China.(COUNTRIES)(Brief article)(Statistical data)
December 24, 2007... CHINA -- Beijing has sealed deals to boost crude imports by almost 300,000 b/d from Saudi Arabia and Iran starting next year. Saudi Arabia, its largest supplier, will raise its crude volumes by almost 38% year-on-year to 720,000 b/d in 2008,...

China.(COUNTRIES)
December 24, 2007... CHINA -- Chevron has inked a 30-year production sharing contract with China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) to develop the estimated 5 Tcf of high-sulfur gas in the Chuandongbei fields in southwestern Sichuan province. CNPC will have a 51%...

Japan.(COUNTRIES)
December 24, 2007... JAPAN -- In a bid to nail down guaranteed oil supplies, the state-backed Japan Bank for International Cooperation is co-financing multibillion-dollar loans to the UAE, including lending $3 billion to Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. Repayment of the...

Mexico.(COUNTRIES)(Brief article)
December 24, 2007... MEXICO -- The government has taken steps to assert its claim to an oiland gasrich part of the Gulf of Mexico also claimed by the US. In a brief filed with the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, the Mexican government is...

Russia.(COUNTRIES)
December 24, 2007... RUSSIA -- With last week's official launch of the 35 Tcf Yuzhno-Russkoye gas field in West Siberia, BASF has become the first-ever German company to be directly involved in gas production in the country. The price of becoming state Gazprom's...

Russia.(COUNTRIES)
December 24, 2007... RUSSIA -- State-owned Rosneft will need foreign partners for its exploration efforts on the Black Sea shelf, including the Tuapse Trough and the Shatsky Val, the company's president, Sergei Bogdanchikov, confirmed last week, while a separate...

Turkmenistan.(COUNTRIES)
December 24, 2007... TURKMENISTAN -- Excessively high demands for signature bonuses are delaying the signing by Lukoil and ConocoPhillips of production sharing agreements (PSA) for blocks on the Turkmen Caspian shelf, sources tell PIW. Lukoil and strategic partner...

United States.(COUNTRIES)(Brief article)
December 24, 2007... UNITED STATES -- Crude imports dropped sharply in October, down 541,000 b/d from September at 9.77 million b/d, according to new data from the Energy Information Administration. October's imports were also 332,000 b/d lower than the same month...

Big reserves, big challenges for DNO.(What's New Around the World)(Brief article)
December 24, 2007... Norway's DNO has announced higher reserve estimates for its Tawke field in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Recoverable reserves are now estimated to be in the range of 150 million-370 million bbl, up from an initial figure of 100 million...

Looking ahead.(Marketview)
December 24, 2007... NEW YORK -- Oil markets last week entered the relatively quiet holiday trading season, which typically sees thin volumes and sometimes erratic volatility. So far, the price of US prompt oil is lingering in the low $90s, but history suggests...

Belarus deal eases fears of new Russia energy row.
December 24, 2007... Russia and Belarus have agreed a 19% increase in the price of Russian gas deliveries to its smaller neighbor, easing concerns about a repeat of the new-year showdowns that caused temporary disruptions in Russian energy flows to Europe at the...

PIW market indicators.(Petroleum Intelligence Weekly )(Statistical table)
December 24, 2007... PIW Market Indicators 1 Week 2 Weeks 4 Weeks Spot Crude Ago Ago Ago Opec Basket $87.30 $86.43 $88.78 UK Brent (Dtd.) 90.72 90.38 92.30 UK...