Exxon hopes to win Abu Dhabi oilfield
NEW YORK: American firm ExxonMobil Corp hopes to conclude a deal to develop a large Abu Dhabi oilfield in the next couple of months, with only a handful of items left to finalise, a top executive said.

Exxon was selected by the UAE for exclusive talks in April to obtain a 28 per cent stake in the Upper Zakum field, among the world’s largest oilfields. Exxon hopes to sign the long-awaited deal before the end of the year, said Tim Cejka, who oversees Exxon’s exploration operations.

CNPC denies stake talks
BEIJING: China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) has denied it is in talks to sell as much as half of its $4.18 billion acquisition of a strategically important oil company to Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil firm.
The Wall Street Journal reported the deal by CNPC to sell a 33 to 50 per cent stake in PetroKazakhstan Inc to KazMunaiGaz (KMG) was expected to be sealed in the next few weeks. “There are no such talks,” CNPC said.

Oman awards deals
MUSCAT: Oman awarded three foreign oil companies concessions to develop an onshore and an offshore block in the country, the Oil Ministry said.
Irish firm Circle Oil signed a six-year deal to conduct seismic studies and exploration activities for block 52, a 90,760 sq km-long offshore area. The second agreement was reached with Sweden-based GotOil Resources and Danish firm Odin Energi A/S for block 15, covering an area of 1,389 sq km.

Price hike ruled out
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia will not raise pump prices of fuel further this year.
The government said the move to keep prices low was due to concern about the inflationary effect of high energy costs.

Talks held to resolve row
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia and Brunei have made progress in talks over disputed oil-rich waters and want to resolve the row quickly, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said.
Both nations have awarded oil exploration blocks that appear to overlap in the waters of the South China Sea off North Borneo. There are estimated to be 700 million barrels of recoverable reserves at a single find in the area.

Keppel to fix rigs
SINGAPORE: Singapore’s offshore oil rig builder Keppel Corp said the yard of its US subsidiary in the Gulf of Mexico would cater to rigs damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
“Our subsidiary, Keppel AmFELS in the Gulf of Mexico, is well positioned to support owners to bring their rigs back to operation,” a Keppel spokeswoman said. She said it was too early to estimate the impact on Keppel’s business.

China gas output up
BEIJING: Natural gas production in China is expected to top 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) this year, up 22.6 per cent from 2004, the country’s largest oil and gas producer said.
Natural gas production was expected be 85 bcm in 2010 and  100 bcm in 2015, the China National Petroleum Corp said on its website. Gas output in 2004 was 40.769 bcm, 18.5 per cent higher than a year before.

Office opened
LONDON: Aberdeen-based LEAding Edge Advantage (LEA) has opened a branch office in Malaysia.
The well engineering consultancy said the office in Kuala Lumpur has been set up in conjunction with Oil and Gas Management Sdn Bhd (OGM). The company hopes the move will help it in securing new contracts in Malaysia.

Price draft ready
JAKARTA: Indonesia  may increase domestic oil product costs by between 30 and 40 per cent on average, a Mines and Energy Ministry official said.
“We have a draft on fuel increases. The increase is possibly between 30-40 per cent on average for gasoline, kerosene and diesel for transport,” said the official, who declined to be identified.

Citgo units at full capacity
CARACAS: Citgo, the US-based unit of Venezuela state oil company PDVSA, is processing 398,000 barrels per day (bpd) at its Louisiana Lake Charles refinery in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Citgo’s president said.
Citgo had requested oil from the US emergency stockpile for its Lake Charles plant – with a crude distillation capacity of 425,000 bpd – after Katrina battered US offshore oil and gas production.
All of Citgo’s plants were running with a combined capacity of 840,000 bpd, Citgo president Felix Rodriguez said.

Preem refinery shut
LONDON: Sweden’s Preem Petroleum has gone ahead with a planned five-week maintenance shutdown at its 113,000-barrels-per-day Gothenburg refinery.
A September shutdown has been on Preem’s schedule for several months.

Plant to close down
TYCHY (Poland): Polish oil refiner and retailer Lotos will shut down its small Czechowice refinery to convert it to production of bio-fuels, the company’s CEO Pawel Olechnowicz said.
This year Czechowice is expected to refine about 500,000 tonnes of crude oil, while its main refinery in the Baltic port of Gdansk has capacity of six million tonnes.

Tatneft sells assets
MOSCOW: Russia’s mid-sized oil firm Tatneft said it had sold key equipment in its refinery as it wanted to build a new one, in a move that analysts said was not logical and likely driven by politics.
The 500,000-barrel-per-day producer, located in the Volga region of Tatarstan, said in a statement it had sold all assets in the 140,000-bpd Nizhnekamsk refinery, in which it controls 63 per cent, to industrial group TAIF for an undisclosed sum.

BPCL to raise money
NEW DELHI: India’s state-run Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) will raise 10 billion rupees from the market in the fiscal year to March 2006, its chairman said.
Ashok Sinha said the firm was sufferring a revenue loss of four billion rupees a month as domestic fuel prices had not been raised in line with international prices.

Kuwait company wins $54m deal
KUWAIT: Heavy Engineering Industries and Shipbuilding Co won a 15.9 million Kuwaiti dinar  ($54.4 million) contract to build crude oil pipelines for state-run Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Kuwait’s bourse said.
KOC is the Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC) subsidiary in charge of the upstream oil sector in Kuwait, which controls nearly a 10th of global petroleum reserves.

Kufpec eyes Syria
THE HAGUE: State-owned Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (Kufpec) sees potential for striking more oil and gas exploration deals in Syria and Oman.
“There is a lot of potential in Syria,” company chairman Bader Al Khashti said on the sidelines of an energy conference in The Hague.
“This is the right time to enter the country since nobody else is still there,” he said. Kufpec is also bidding for exploration contracts in Oman.

Oil discovered
SANTIAGO (Chile): The international arm of Chile’s state-owned oil company ENAP said it made another oil discovery in Egypt, where it recently widened explorations.
Sipetrol said in a statement to the Chilean securities commission that the new discovery was made at the ED 3-X well, at a depth of 1,727 metres.
ENAP, or Empresa Nacional del Petroleo, said it was still awaiting a licence from Egyptian authorities to develop the well.

Pipelines damaged
TEHRAN: Small bombs damaged 15 pipelines and one oil well in southwest Iran, but quick repairs meant crude output was unaffected.
Ahmad Tahampesar, operations manager of Karun Oil and Gas Exploration Company, denied reports that saboteurs had shut down five wells in the province of Khuzestan, Iran’s oil heartland.

QUICK TAKES

Vitol to market Dar Blend crude
SINGAPORE: European oil trader Vitol has been selected to market up to 3.6 million barrels per month of Sudan’s new heavy sweet Dar Blend crude, traders said.
Vitol will market five to six 600,000-barrel cargoes a month of the crude, which is due to come on stream by the end of this year, a source close to the deal said. A Vitol official declined to comment on the deal, which is in the final stages of conclusion.
Dar Blend is a heavy sweet crude, with an API gravity of 26.42 and a low sulphur content of 0.116 per cent. But its high acid number of 2.4 will make it difficult to market. Grades with acid number higher than 1 are corrosive and can only be run in refineries equipped to handle them.
Sudan and Malaysia’s Petronas have signed a $1 billion contract to build a 100,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery to process Dar Blend in the coastal city of Port Sudan.

Putin seeks Gazprom role in Italy
MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin has asked Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to let Russian gas giant Gazprom invest more heavily in Italy as it prepares to expand in Europe’s liberalising gas markets.
“It is in our interest that our companies, including Gazprom, are allowed to invest extra money in Italy’s energy sector, including in gas distribution network,” Putin said.
Putin also said Italian firms were prepared to expand in Russia to catch up with German peers, such as E.ON’s Ruhrgas or BASF’s Wintershall, which already have a number of joint projects with Gazprom.

Statoil wins gas supply deal
OSLO: Norwegian energy group Statoil said that it had won a contract to supply 300 million cubic metres of natural gas per year for a planned natural gas power plant in West Norway.
Deliveries to the power plant, to be built at Kaarstoe north of Stavanger, would start on October 1, 2007, it said.
Statkraft and Norwegian energy group Norsk Hydro will build the power plant in a 50-50 joint venture.
“The deal with Statoil will cover its share of the fuel requirement for the power station,” Statoil said, adding that the contract had been awarded by Statkraft.

ENVIRONMENTAL EYE

China to increase use of renewable energy
BEIJING: China, the world’s second-largest oil consumer, may boost its long-term commitment to renewable energy use by 50 per cent.
Beijing currently aims to get one-tenth of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, and this year passed a law forcing power suppliers to buy more electricity from plants that do not burn fossil fuels.
But with imports rocketing and the environmental toll of dirty coal climbing – Premier Wen Jiabao said it met 75 per cent of the country’s energy needs – officials are eyeing an even more ambitious programme.
“By 2020 renewable energy (could) account for 15 per cent of energy production in China, including large-scale hydropower projects,” Shi Lishan, director of renewable energy at the policy-setting National Development and Reform Commission, told an energy conference in Beijing.
The new target was being discussed by top officials, said on the sidelines of the conference, although he declined to give a date when it might be confirmed.
The impact on river systems of projects like the giant Three Gorges Dam, the largest in the world, means some environmentalists object to them being counted with generators like wind-turbines or solar panels. At present renewable sources provide around seven per cent of China's energy, Shi said.
Acid rain affects around one-third of a country that the World Bank says has 20 of the 30 most air-polluted cities in the world, providing strong incentives to seek more clean energy.
Global warming is also a growing concern for the world’s number-two emitter of greenhouse gases. China faces a range of natural challenges from desertification to seasonal typhoons that could be exacerbated by hotter weather.
It has approved the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and, although it has no obligation to cut carbon dioxide emissions during the pact’s first phase to 2012, analysts say it is keen to show it is a good global citizen.

ONGC and Hydro sign agreement
NEW DELHI: India’s petroleum minister Mani Shankar Aiyar said state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp has signed a memorandum of understanding with Norway’s second largest oil company, Norsk Hydro, to undertake joint exploration ventures in the Middle East and Cuba.
“For now, we have an understanding for Cuba and West Asia,” Aiyar told reporters in a teleconference from Oslo. “We are also confident that at some point, ONGC and Norsk Hydro could be partners in Iran,” Aiyar added.

Contract awarded
NEW YORK: Transocean Inc has been awarded contracts for its rigs Transocean Arctic and Polar Pioneer potentially worth around $700 million.
The Transocean Arctic will be on a 50-month contract off of Norway starting in the third quarter of 2006. The Polar Pioneer will have a 36-month contract offshore Norway, starting in April 2006.

Stake acquired
RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil’s oil company Petrobras bought operating rights to explore at an offshore block in Nigeria for $81 million, expanding its presence in the African country expected to become Petrobras’ key overseas production base.
Petrobras said it won a 45 per cent stake in the deep-water Block 315, with Norway’s Statoil holding another 45 per cent and Nigeria’s Ask Petroleum System with the remaining 10 percent.

Budget unveiled
JAKARTA: Anadarko plans to invest $130 million in exploring for oil and gas in Indonesia over the next three years, the US-based company said.
The total expenditure includes a $80-million exploration agreement with Medco Energi Internasional to explore 13 blocks, a senior Anadarko official.

Output restarted
LONDON: BP Plc said it had restarted production at some of its Gulf of Mexico facilities which had been shut in due to Hurricane Katrina.
A spokesman said operations had restarted at its Holstein platform, which produces 55,000 barrels of oil per day, and some other facilities on the Western shelf of the US Gulf.