Oil Briefs
Posted 29 Octoberr 2003
Pressing their
vision of a stable and prosperous Iraq, US officials recently appealed
to reluctant allies for billions of dollars to help it rebuild,
according to MSNBC news. Kuwait and others answered with word of
“generous aid,” but France and Germany again said no,
at least for now.
A year after
the Prestige oil-tanker disaster off Spain, single-hull tankers
carrying heavy fuel oil were banned from EU ports under new rules
adopted last month. The European Union’s executive Commission
said it would continue to press for an international regime against
the most dangerous types of tanker.
The Russian
Prosecutor General’s Office is planning to file charges against
a number of senior Yukos executives. “The Prosecutor General’s
Office has serious complaints against some high-ranking Yukos officials.
Some of them will face charges for crimes they committed earlier,”
Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov told journalists late
last month.
Hunting for
substitute sources of energy, China is conducting active surveying
and prospecting for marine energy deposits, including those of the
highly-efficient “combustible ice” in the northern Yellow
Sea and part of the East China Sea, as well as a widely-known survey
programme on track in the northern South China Sea.
Seven oil
and gas companies, including US-based ConocoPhillips, are applying
for exploration and production licenses for the Palmera onshore
South Sumatra block in Indonesia, a government official said recently.
Over the first
nine months of 2003, Gazexport, an affiliate of Gazprom, exported
102.38bn cubic meters of natural gas, up 7.2 per cent against the
corresponding period of 2002, according to the Gazexport press service.
In particular, the gas giant exported 101.53bn cubic meters to countries
outside the CIS, up from 94.9bn cubic metres over the same period
of last year.
Lithuanian
Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas and Lukoil President Vagit Alekperov
discussed an oil production project on the Baltic shelf, Lukoil
reported in a press release. Brazauskas, who was on a working visit
to Moscow, and Alekperov agreed at the meeting to draft a bilateral
agreement on damage compensation in case of an oil spillage at the
Kravtsovskoye (D- 6) field, located on the Russian continental shelf
of the Baltic Sea.
A class-action
lawsuit against oil giant ChevronTexaco opened last month in a small,
cinderblock courthouse in a frontier oil town in the Ecuadorian
rainforest, charging the company with despoiling the environment
with millions of gallons of spilled crude oil during the 1970s and
'80s.
Engineering
firm ABB lately reiterated that the key sale of its oil and gas
unit needed to cut debt was on track for this year despite a report
suggesting it could be delayed by appeals to its US asbestos settlement.
Scandinavian
polyolefin producer, Borealis, would increase its linear low density
polyethylene production capacity at its Porvoo facility, Finland,
by 80,000 mt/yr, a company source said recently.
CMS Trunkline
LNG can revise its plan to increase capacity at its Lake Charles,
Louisiana, liquefied natural gas terminal, the US Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission said last month, clearing the way for measures
that are intended to cut about $11 million in construction costs
and $3.2-million/year of operating costs.
BG Group,
the international oil and gas operator, accelerated its drive into
the liquefied natural gas business late last month with an order
worth $450m (£270m) for three new ships to transport the products.
The contract, with Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea, includes
an option for another four new ships which could push the investment
outlay to more than $1 billion (£630m).
Indian refiner
Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) and Oil India are setting up
a Rs 560-crore petroleum products pipeline from Numaligarh Refinery
to Siliguri in north Bengal. The pipeline will be used to evacuate
the refinery’s products as well as augment its plans to foray
into oil retailing.
The Philippines
and Thailand have signed a deal that is expected to boost the oil
and natural gas industries of the two countries. A memorandum of
understanding (MOU) was inked by Philippine Energy Secretary Vincent
S Perez and Thailand’s Energy Minister Prommin Lertsuridej
on the sidelines of the 11th Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
summit held in Bangkok, Thailand, last month.
Ruyal Dutch-Shell’s
lead presence on the Woodside Petroleum share register is making
it tough to find a replacement for sacked chief executive John Akehurst.
Six months after the announcement of his departure, New York-based
global executive recruiting firm Russell Reynolds has still to flush
out an international replacement, fuelling speculation Woodside
will anoint its acting chief executive Keith Spence.
Valero Energy
Corporation has selected CB&I, through its Process and Technology
group, to design and build sulphur recovery/tail gas treating units
at its refineries in Three Rivers, Texas, and Ardmore, Okla. As
part of Valero’s clean fuels initiative, these units will
improve the sulphur recovery capabilities at each refinery.
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