Oil producer Afren said its board has decided to put the company into administration after failing to secure support for a refinancing and restructuring plan. Afren, whose shares have been suspended since July 15, said talks with bondholders, banks and its partners were scuppered after the London-headquartered company cut its production forecast for the year.
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Friday that talks were ongoing with Ankara on the TurkStream gas pipeline project and that Moscow had agreed for a 10.25 percent gas price discount for Turkey.
China's state oil giants are set to start pumping a combined 160,000 barrels a day at two projects in southwestern Iran from around October, company sources said, contributing to Tehran's plan to boost output ahead of sanctions being lifted. Chinese energy firms had earlier put on hold or slowed work on energy projects in Iran from late 2010, worried about penalties that might be imposed by Washington as it led world powers to press Tehran to curb its nuclear ambitions. Iran and six world powers, including China and the United States, clinched a landmark deal on July 14 that limits the Islamic nation's nuclear activities in return for lifting sanctions that have more than halved its oil exports since 2012.
OPEC expects increasing oil demand to prevent a further fall in prices and sees a more balanced market in 2016, its secretary-general said on Thursday, the latest sign the group is sticking to its policy of defending market share. Oil has dropped about 15 percent this month and halved in value in the past year but neither OPEC nor Russia, the world's top producer, have cut output to support prices, hoping cheaper oil will hit U.S. shale and other rival sources. "I would not expect they (prices) are going to fall because demand is growing," OPEC Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri told reporters in Moscow. OPEC pumps around 40 percent of global oil production.
Italian oil and gas group Eni raised its production targets for the year on Thursday as second-quarter net profit slumped due to lower oil prices and a heavy loss at oil contractor subsidiary Saipem. State-controlled Eni said adjusted net profit in the second quarter was 0.14 billion euros ($153 million), below the consensus forecast of 0.48 billion euros in a Reuters poll of analysts. Stripping out the Saipem effect, adjusted net profit was 0.45 billion euros. On Tuesday, Saipem reported a quarterly adjusted operating loss of 738 million euros after heavy writedowns as part of a turnaround plan.
Russia and OPEC are pursuing the same goals of keeping the oil market balanced and stable, Energy Minister Alexander Novak told OPEC Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri on Thursday. OPEC decided in June to keep oil production unchanged in a bid to defend its market share. Russia has also refused to take any action to support oil prices which have more than halved since last year. "The global oil market is being affected by various political factors. In particular, ... the agreement on Iran ... and its consequences ... will have an impact on the market," Novak said during a visit to Moscow by Badri.
Chevron Corp, the second-largest U.S. oil company, said on Tuesday it would lay off 1,500 employees, about 2 percent of its global work force, as it trims costs to offset declining crude prices. Nearly all of the layoffs will be in Texas, where the company has expanded in recent years to develop land in the Permian shale formation, and California, where Chevron is headquartered. Fifty international employees will be laid off and roughly 600 contractor positions will be canceled, the company said in a statement.
Novatek, Russia's No. 2 gas producer, made second-quarter net profit of 41.9 billion roubles ($703 million), up 31 percent year-on-year on stronger sales, it said on Wednesday. Analysts had expected the firm to post 38 billion roubles in quarterly net profit. The company said its revenues were at 112.2 billion roubles, up from 88.4 billion roubles in the same period last year.
Croatia's Constitutional Court has annulled two corruption convictions against former prime minister Ivo Sanader and ordered a retrial. Sanader, prime minister from 2004 to 2009, had been convicted of taking a bribe from the Hungarian oil group MOL in 2008 to allow it to take a dominant stake in Croatia's biggest utility, the oil firm INA, and also of taking a bribe from Austria's Hypo Bank in 1994 and 1995, when he was deputy foreign minister.
Colombia's state-owned oil company Ecopetrol sold more than half its shares in energy company Empresa de Energia de Bogota (EEB) for $215 million, Ecopetrol said on Monday, as part of its plan to sell assets to fund investments. Ecopetrol said in a statement it sold 352 million shares, 55.1 percent of its interest in EEB, for 1,740 Colombian pesos per share. The shares were sold to a preferential group of employees, retirees, pension funds and unions.
Ukraine plans to increase natural gas imports from Europe in August with a view to boosting injections into storage for next winter, Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn said on Monday. He told a televised briefing that Ukraine aimed to import around 40 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas per day from Europe, up from 24 mcm of gas per day in July. Plans call for increasing injections into underground storage to 52-53 mcm per day in August from the current 35-40 mcm.
China's biggest coal producer, Shenhua Group, plans to list its wind farm assets in an initial public offering in Hong Kong valued at up to $1 billion, IFR reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the plans.
South Africa's 45 million barrel strategic crude reserve depot is filled to capacity as oil traders hoping prices will rise in the future snap up storage capacity, two industry sources told Reuters. The state-run Strategic Fuel Fund Association (SFF) operates six underground crude bunkers at the Saldanha Bay facility, one of the largest oil storage centres in the world. Global crude prices have remained depressed since a supply glut led to a more than halving of prices last year.
The scramble for gasoline this summer has thrown a lifeline to European refiners, pushing gasoline cracks to multi-year highs and tightening the market for the fuel's components, but the seasonal effect next year is likely to be more muted. Stephen George, chief economist at UK-based consultancy KBC Advanced Technologies, said demand for gasoline in the United States and China had risen by about 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) year-on-year, triggered by lower oil prices. "It's about twice as strong as distillate demand growth this year, while new market supplies are skewed to diesel," George said in the Reuters Global Oil Forum on Thursday.
A ban on 113 oil tankers by Nigerian state oil company NNPC must be lifted immediately as no grounds have been given for the measure, the global oil tanker industry association said in a letter of protest.
A venture between Royal Dutch Shell and Canada's Petromanas has applied to drill two onshore blocks in central Albania close to another promising well they are drilling further south, an official said on Thursday. The official said three bids had been submitted for the blocks - from Shell Upstream Albania B.V with Petromanas Albania GmbH, Israel's Delek Group Limited and Interland Investments SA.
Singapore-based conglomerate Keppel's second-quarter net profit fell 2 percent to S$396.7 million ($290.2 million) from a year earlier, weighed down by weak performance in the offshore and marine unit. Keppel, one of the world's largest offshore rig builders, also has business interest in real estate and infrastructure. The weakness in oil market over the past year has been weighing on the rig building business globally. Keppel posted revenue of S$2.6 billion for the quarter ended June 30, down 19 percent from a year earlier, and a net profit of S$756.9 million for the first half of the year. That was slightly short of half of a mean estimate for the full year at S$1.59 billion, based on 21 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.
Iran outlined plans on Thursday for the rebuilding of its core industries and trade links in the wake of a nuclear agreement with world powers, saying it was targeting oil and gas projects worth $185 billion by 2020. Iran's Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh said the Islamic Republic would focus on its oil and gas, metals and car industries with an eye to exporting to Europe after sanctions have been lifted. "We are looking for a two-way trade as well as cooperation in development, design and engineering," Nematzadeh told a conference in Vienna.
When the HMAS Sydney was sunk during WWII by what should have been a weaker German cruiser, all 645 of its crewmen perished, taking the explanation for the disaster to their watery graves. But nearly 70 years on, an Aberdeenshire subsea technology company has played a “key role” in solving the mystery surrounding the sinking of the ship, which lay undiscovered off the western Australian coast until 2008. Ashtead Technology yesterday said it donated equipment to the survey team after being sounded out by international subsea firm DOF Subsea earlier this year.
A former senior Chinese energy executive has gone on trial this week, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday, part of the government's sweeping crackdown against deep-rooted corruption. Wang Yongchun was a deputy general manager at China's biggest oil company, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), until he became caught up in a graft probe last year. Wang's trial on charges of "holding a huge amount of property with unidentified sources" and "abuse of power by a staff member of a state-owned company" opened on Monday in Xiangyang, central Hubei province, Xinhua said.
A drop in oil prices this month is likely to be short-term and will not deflect OPEC from its policy of keeping output high to defend market share, delegates from Gulf OPEC members and other nations said. Falling Chinese stock markets and the Greek debt crisis have raised concern about demand, while the Iranian nuclear deal could lead to higher oil exports from the Islamic Republic. Benchmark Brent crude, trading below $57 a barrel on Wednesday, has fallen more than 10 percent in July. OPEC, in a major policy shift, decided in November against cutting its production target of 30 million barrels per day (bpd) to prop up prices, seeking instead to defend market share against U.S. shale oil and other competing sources. The group reconfirmed the strategy at a meeting in June.
South Korea's S-Oil Corp, the country's third-largest refiner, said on Wednesday it sees a recovery in industry-wide second-half refining margins after a recent dip. S-Oil whose main shareholder is Saudi Aramco, the Kingdom's state oil giant, reported a 613 billion Korean won ($533 million) profit in the second quarter from a 238.1 billion won profit a quarter earlier and a 54.4 billion won loss a year ago, helped by more stable oil prices and healthy margins. The refiner said it expected margins to recover to a solid level following a recent correction.
Brazil's state-run oil firm Petrobras confirmed on Tuesday it had found irregularities in the approval of a 2009 contract to provide naphtha to petrochemical company Braskem SA and had reported the issue to public prosecutors. Petrobras, or Petroleo Brasileiro SA, said in a securities filing that it began investigating the contract based on plea deal testimony from former executive Paulo Roberto Costa and money changer Alberto Youssef in a sweeping graft probe. On Saturday, TV Globo reported that the two revealed a bribe paid by Braskem for a deal allowing it to pay below-market rates for naphtha, causing losses to Petrobras.
South Korea's GS Engineering and Construction Corp has signed a contract to expand a Korea Petrochemical Industry Co (KPIC) naphtha cracking plant for 311 billion Korean won ($270 million), the two companies said on Wednesday. The project will help KPIC expand its ethylene production capacity to 800,000 tonnes per year (tpy) from 490,000 tpy, along with its raising benzene, toluene and xylene production capacity to 300,000 tpy from 220,000 tpy, according to the builder GS E&C in a statement.
So you’ve decided you can’t cost directly any more. You approach is now to improve processes for maximum efficiency. But what excuses are you likely to meet in rolling out these processes? And what can you do to counteract them? Through work with Operators, Service Companies & Contractors of all types both in the UK and further afield here’s STC’s ‘top excuses’ (and our most effective approaches to making them go away!):
