Market News
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MIDDLE EAST, INDIA & CASPIAN
Qatar
Maersk and Qatar Petroleum are planning to invest about $3 billion to double production of Al Shaheen field by 2008. The gas collected could be converted to condensates, LPG and NGL (GN Mar 25, 05)
Qatar Electricity and Water Co (55%) signed the construction agreement with International Power Company of UK (40%) and Chubu electric Japan (5%) for the Ras Laffan B project costing QR900m forming a company called Q-Power to produce 1025 MW of electricity and 60mn gallons of desalinated water a day. (QTimes Apr 4, 05)
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Aramco and Indian Oil Corp signed MOU to evaluate future cooperation in petroleum research and development and the commercial exploitation of any resulting technologies (Aramco Mar 30, 05)
Kuwait
Shell Group has signed an MOU with KPC for future joint investments in the downstream sector, a move that could help the Shell gain access to the emirate’s oil riches. (DJones Mar 23, 05)
India
India has reached an agreement with Japan for the joint development of natural gas off the security sensitive Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal (INews Apr 2, 05)
ONGC plans exploration well at the NELP 1 Block MN-OSN-97/3 at Mahanadi offshore the East Coast (INews Apr 2, 05)
Reliance wants to hold on to the entire KG-DWN-98/3 where Gujarat Petroleum block sits in its vicinity (INews Apr 2, 05)
Iran
Iran is facing seriousness relating to the rate of South Pars gas migrating to Qatar. There are worries over the fate of South Pars’ reserves if Iran continues to lag behind Qatar in exploiting the �eld through several LNG projects causing the reservoir to get sourer and more complicated towards the east and that the most easterly areas which would be dedicated to any pipeline exports to Pakistan and India are useless (Upstream Apr 1, 05)
Caspian
Kazakhstan
BP was due to complete the sale of its 16.7% share in North Caspian production sharing agreement which includes the Kashagan for about $1.8 billion. The shares will be purchased by �ve of the six remaining members of the consortium — Eni, Exxon- Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, Total and ConocoPhillips (Upstream Apr 1, 05).
Kazmunaigaz of Kazakhstan state owned agreed to buy an 8.33% stake from ENI and its partners (FExpress Apr 1, 05)
AFRICA & EUROPE
Africa
Angola
Marathon announced its sixth deepwater discovery on Block 31 at the Ceres-1 around 170km off the coast and 32km SE of the planned NE Development Area, and 31km NW of the Palas discovery in 5,358ft of water (Newswire Mar 31, 05)
Nigeria
Nigeria federal government directives regarding local content is insisting all front-end engineering and design work for upstream projects must be conducted in-country by the end of this year. According to NNPC FPSO integration work must also take place in Nigeria from the end of 2006 (Upstream Mar 25, 05)
Pioneer Natural Resources announced that a subsidiary has joined Oranto Petroleum and Orandi Petroleum in an existing PSC on Block 320 in deepwater, about 150km SE of Lagos in water depth between 6,900 to 8,900 feet (Upstream Apr 1, 05)
W. Africa – Others
Congo
Murphy announced today that its Saphir Marine #1 and Onyx Marine #1 exploration wells drilled in the Mer Profonde Sud (MPS) block offshore the Republic of Congo failed to encounter significant hydrocarbons (BWire Mar 28, 05)
Mediterranean
Including North Africa and Southern Europe
Egypt
Gazprom is considering joining a project aimed at building a pipeline that will deliver natural gas from Egypt to consumers in third countries including Syria, Lebanon and Cyprus (IFax Mar 28, 05)
GULF OF MEXICO (PARTIAL)
ChevronTexaco is buying rival Unocal the ninth biggest US oil and gas exploration and production company for about $16.4 billion in cash and stock. Unocal has been evaluating a possible sale and drawn interest from ENI and China CNOOC. The acquisition, which is subject to approvals by Unocal shareholders and certain regulatory agencies, is expected to be completed in six months (AP Apr 4, 05)
Thousands of oil and natural gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico could be converted into deep-sea fish farms raising red snapper, mahi mahi, yellow fin tuna and flounder, under a plan backed by the Bush administration (Upstream Apr 1, 05)
FAR EAST & AUSTRALASIA
China
Shell and PetroChina have signed a production sharing contract to jointly develop natural gas at Changbei field in north-west China’s Ordos basin and are waiting overall development plan approval from the government (Upstream Mar 25, 05)
China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is applying for a license to explore a virgin block in northern China’s Bohai Sea as part of a larger program to expand its operations to offshore areas, with the aim of exploring the Liaoxi Trough in the western part of the Liaodong Gulf (Upstream Mar 25, 05)
PetroChina has made seven discoveries in the NW Xinjian region in 1QTR05. The largest at the Yingmai 32 well and the Lunnan 621 well (Upstream Apr 1, 05)
Statoil has abandoned Lufeng 17-1 well, drilled in Feb 2005, as a dry hole (EPN Apr 1, 05)
Indonesia
Continental Energy Corporation announced that its Bengara-II Block production contract area is not within the area which has recently become the subject of a territorial boundary dispute between Indonesia and Malaysia (PZone Mar 29, 05)
BP has launched the Mega Persada-Terang-Sirasun development of gas fields by inviting for FEED. WorleyParsons, Intec Engrg, Wood Group, Technip and possibly JR McDermott are competing. Offers are due to be submitted on 31 March (EPN Mar 31, 05)
Unocal will issue EPIC tenders for Phase 1 Sadewa gas condensate field development either this month or next. Prequalified conractors included McDermott, SOME and Nippon Steel and possibly Technip while Clough’s subsidiary Petrosea is hoping for subcontract work (Upstream Apr 1, 05)
Malaysia
Nippon Oil has strengthened its upstream portfolio by additional equity in four companies held by Japan National Oil Corporation with Asia Paci�c assets in Malaysia, Vietnam and Australia at a cost of $304 million (Upstream Apr 1, 05)
Papua New Guinea
ExxonMobil and Papua New Guinea are in a dispute over the development concept for the PNG Gas Project. ExxonMobil and its main project partner Oil Search have concentrated on a concept that differs from the PNG Gas Agreement agreed by the government and project joint venturers in June 2002 (Upstream Mar 25, 05)
Thailand
The former head of PTT Viset Choopiban has been appointed Energy Minister of Thailand replacing Prommin Lertsuridej who is now Secretary General to the Prime Minister (Upstream Apr 1, 05)
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Other Related News
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Middle East, India & Caspian
L&T has secured a $42.6 million contract from India’s ONGC to revamp and rebuild a process complex in the Bombay High south field. L&T will carry out the contract at its Modular Fabrication Facilities at Hazira and expects to complete the contract by April 2006. It has also sub-contracted the provision of transportation, offshore installation and supply of marine spread to Dolphin Offshore Enterprises (Upstream Mar 25, 05)
Technip is conducting FEED for Petronas Carigali for the full-field development of Block 1 offshore Turkmenistan, whereas SBM’s workscope on the project involves a separate three-year extended well test system, which is scheduled to start this November. Malaysia Shipyard & Engineering is not involved with Technip (Upstream Apr 1, 05)
Far East & Australasia
CB&I and China’s Chengdu Engineering Corporation (CEC) has secured a deal with CNOOC to build liquefied natural gas storage facilities in Fujian province (Upstream Mar 25, 05)
Nippon Steel has been awarded a contract to build and install a batch of platforms on PTTEP’s $830 million Arthit gas development in the Gulf of Thailand. Sources said that Thai Nippon’s yard was not big enough to accommodate the large Arthit jacket, so Thai Nippon lined up another work-hungry yard, J Ray McDermott Indonesia. Meanwhile, still to be tendered for Arthit in the second phase are a LQ platform and three Whplatforms. Thai Nippon Steel is likely to face competition from Cuel (Unithai) and Clough/STP&I (Upstream Mar 25, 05)
Transfield Worley JV and Amec/Clough alliance will share the contract for Woodside gas and oil assets in Australia North West Shelf area. Trans�eld and WorleyParsons had bid against Amec/Clough and Fluor for the entire integrated EPC and maintenance service contract onshore and offshore but Woodside split the contract in two awarding Transfield the gas assets and Amec/Clough the oil assets (Upstream Apr 1, 05)
Clough Amec JV has been selected the preferred tenderer for an Integrated Services Contract by Woodside Australia. Clough Amec will now enter the second stage of the procurement in order to formalize the agreement by September 2005 for a three year contract starting Jan 2006 (Clough Apr 1, 05)
Technip and JPKenny were the joint upstream winning contactors for ChevronTexaco $8.5 billion Gorgon gas project in Australia, beating competitor Fluor and Intec Engineering who were previously favoured. The upstream facilities include a 30� x 70km subsea high pressure pipeline and another 90km subsea pipeline from Barrow Island to the mainland (Upstream Apr 1, 05)
HL Engineering of Malaysia has beaten competition from Indonesia PT Profab and Australia Ausclad to win the Cliff Head platform contract. This would be the first overseas platform contract for HL Engineering that in the past had built two West Patricia jackets and one West Patricia Topsides for Murphy (Upstream Apr 1, 05)
Ausclad, Australia’s leading oil and gas fabricator is seeking a listing on the Singapore Stock Exchange. The company’s seven member board is chaired by Koh Soo Keong, president and executive director of Singapore- listed SembCorp Logistics. Koh is an independent and non-executive director of Ausgroup (Upstream Apr 1, 05)
MODEC has received a LOI from KNOC for the supply of a FSO for the Rong Doi (Twin Dragon), Rong Doi Tay (Twin Dragon West) fields. LOI also includes the time charter of the FSO to KNOC for 7 years with max 30 years operation (EPN Apr 5, 05)
Aker Kvaerner has been awarded by ChevronTexaco Thailand a three year contract for supply of surface wellhead equipment and associated services to be used within its Gulf of Thailand operations (Aker Mar 31, 05)
Mustang Engineering a sub of the John Wood Group has extended its global presence with the establishment of operations in the Asia-Pacific region, based in Perth and Melbourne, Australia. Chet Nelson will lead Mustang’s management team in Australia (Mustang Mar 30, 05)
Europe & Mediterranean
Amec has won a contract worth more than $76 million to carry out modification work on Talisman Energy’s Piper B platform in the UK North Sea (Upstream Mar 25, 05)
Keppel Shipyard confirmed it has won a $51.4 million FPSO vessel hull conversion for Marathon’s Alvheim field off Norway (Upstream Mar 25, 05)
Allseas started extensive upgrade work on Solitaire during 4QTR05 which will place the vessel in a position to take advantage of the growing trend towards deepwater pipeline installation. The company plans to lengthen the stinger from 110m to 140m and increase the tension capacity from 3 x 175 mT to 3 x 350 mT and the A&R capacity from 420 mT to 1,000 mT. The departure angles for large diameter pipe will increase from 58 to 75 degrees that will reduce tension by approx 25%. The stinger will maintain the original operating radius of 120m. The double seesaw design of the roller box will measure 8 m center-to-center and include four pairs of V-rollers and a steel roller for A&R cable. Upgrades will add 1,600 mT of steel to the aft section giving it 4,000 mT of additional buoyancy to reduce the pitch motion and increase resistance (Quest Mar 31, 05)
Africa
Stolt has explained to delegates at Marine Construction Europe how eight 300-Ton 400 FSW long 84� dia piles for Angola ExxonMobil Kizomba A 54,000-tonne TLP wellhead platform were installed by Polaris in 3,930ft deepwater using a self righting technique to being the piles to vertical before they were lowered to seabed, using a 110 ton uprighting frame (Quest Mar 31, 05)
America – (Partial News)
Horizon Offshore has decided to delist its shares from the Nasdaq stock exchange with effect from 1 April this year. Horizon expects to close a $70 million secured term loan facility with certain holders of its existing subordinated notes in the refinancing component of its proposed recapitalisation to refinance and restructure its debt maturing in 2005 and obtain working capital financing necessary for the Company to continue its operations (Upstream Mar 25, 05)
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