Halliburton wins Adnoc deal
NEW YORK: Halliburton Co said it was awarded a three-year contract by a unit of Abu Dhabi’s National Oil Company (Adnoc) to provide completion equipment for onshore oil and gas wells.

It did not specify how much revenue the contract would bring in, but Halliburton’s Middle East Region vice president, Gasser Badrashini, said in a statement that it was “significant both in terms of value and volume.”
Kuwait, US firm sign LNG deal
KUWAIT: Kuwait said it signed a $150 million contract with US Excelerate Energy to build import facilities for liquefied natural gas (LNG) for completion by April 2009.
Kuwait is short of gas for power generation during the peak period of electricity demand in the summer, when the country often suffers from blackouts. The country plans to begin LNG imports next summer to help plug the shortfall. The deal with Excelerate was signed on March 31 to equip the south pier at Ahmadi port for LNG imports, which will start in May 2009, state refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Co (KNPC) said in a statement posted on its website.
No timeframe in Nigeria: Shell
LONDON: Royal Dutch Shell said part of its oil production in Nigeria remains shut following a spate of sabotage in April to its oil facilities and it still does not know when it can restore the lost production.
“The situation is unchanged,” a spokesman with Shell in the Hague said. About 164,000 barrels of Bonny Light crude production, or about 40 per cent of the Anglo-Dutch major’s equity oil output in the West African country, was still shut in and a force majeure remained in place.
StatoilHydro makes gas find
OSLO: Norway’s StatoilHydro has made a gas and condensate discovery in the Norwegian Sea at its Alve prospect, Norwegian energy officials said. “The size of the discovery is between three to five billion standard cubic metres (Sm3) recoverable gas,” the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) said in a statement. It said a thin oil zone under the gas was also proven.
CAO, S-Oil in talks for jet fuel
SINGAPORE: China Aviation Oil (Singapore) Corp Ltd (CAO) is in talks with South Korea’s S-Oil as a potential jet fuel supplier for its July-December semi-term contract, a source familiar with the deal said.
The two parties were negotiating a price of 60-70 cents above Singapore spot quotes, free-on-board (FOB) basis, for the cargoes, the Seoul-based source said.
CAO was looking for shipments of one to three medium-range (MR) tankers every month, or about 180,000-540,000 tonnes for the whole period, but S-Oil, South Korea’s No 3 refiner, could only supply one MR-size cargo monthly due to other term commitments, the source said.
S Korea restarts cracker
SEOUL: South Korea’s Yeochun Naphtha Cracking Centre (YNCC) has restarted its No 1 naphtha cracker after it was hit by a power outage over the weekend, a company source said.
The petrochemical unit was now running at 50 per cent capacity, the source added.
Petrovietnam to invest $900m
HANOI: State oil monopoly Petrovietnam will invest $900 million in a second fertiliser plant to make use of its vast natural gas reserves, the Vietnamese government said.
The plant, to be located in the southern province of Ca Mau, will have an annual capacity of 800,000 tonnes and use natural gas feedstock from the offshore PM3-CAA gas block, the government said in a report.
This week Petrovietnam finalised a contract with China’s National Machinery Import and Export Corp to build the Ca Mau plant.
Petrovietnam already operates the Phu My fertiliser plant which has an annual capacity of 740,000 tonnes.
Iran, Indonesia to halve capacity
TEHRAN: Iran and Indonesia will halve the size of a refinery they had originally agreed to build with a capacity of 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the southeast Asian country, an Iranian news agency reported.
Iran signed a deal in March to set up the joint plant in Indonesia. At the time, Iran said it would have capacity for 300,000 bpd, despite comments from Indonesian officials that they wanted to revise it down to between 150,000 to 200,000 bpd.
“Iran and Indonesia decided to start building the Indonesian refinery for half the capacity they had planned before,” Iran’s ISNA news agency reported, without citing a source.
“The lack of enough crude oil reserves for its load caused a cut-down in daily capacity by half,” ISNA said, adding that the original plan was for it to process 300,000 bpd of oil.
Pertamina plans to build plant
JAKARTA: Indonesian state oil firm Pertamina plans to build a polypropylene plant near its 125,000 barrels-per-day Balongan refinery complex in West Java, a senior company official said.
“The prospects for the polypropylene market are good. That is why we plan to build a polypropylene unit to meet domestic demand of plastic,” Pertamina chief Ari Soemarno told reporters.
“Pertamina will expand its propylene output for feedstock for the planned polypropylene plant.”
Another Pertamina official said the polypropylene plant will cost around $200 million with a production capacity of around 200,000 tonnes a year.
PetroChina builds PX plant
BEIJING: PetroChina has started building a 1-million-tonne-per-year paraxylene (PX) and aromatics complex that will produce the raw material for chemical fibres in the northwestern Xinjiang region, a company newspaper said.
The facility, the largest in China and based at PetroChina’s Urumqi plant, will cost 3.9 billion yuan ($558.2 million) and be ready for use by September 2009, the China Petroleum Daily reported.
It will source feedstocks from PetroChina’s 200,000-barrel-per-day dushanzi refinery, the report said. The refinery is expected to be fully operational late this year.
Sinopec refinery to up capacity
BEIJING: Sinopec’s largest Zhenhai refinery plans to further raise its crude processing capacity by 15 per cent to 460,000 barrels per day (bpd) by September 2009, a company newspaper said.
The purpose of the expansion is to provide feedstocks to the one-million-tonne-per-year ethylene facility now under construction, Jiang Zhenghong, manager of the plant, said during a visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, the China Petrochemical News said.
The ethylene complex is scheduled to be ready for use by 2010.
Zhenhai aimed to process 19.5 million tonnes of crude oil this year, which would be 4.8 per cent more than in 2007, Jiang said.
SK Energy seeks gasoline cargo
SEOUL: South Korea’s top refiner SK Energy is seeking a 30,000 tonne gasoline cargo for a first-half of June arrival, trading sources said.
SK Energy is seeking the cargo of 92-RON grade due to planned one-month maintenance at its No 1 57,000 barrel per day (bpd) residual fluid catalytic cracker (RFCC) from June, which will tighten the refiner’s light and middle distillates production, they said.
US diesel offered in Europe
LONDON: Two cargoes of high-spec US diesel were offered to European spot markets and three to four more arbitrage cargoes were destined for European ports, pressuring European prices, traders said.
Litasco, the trading arm of Russian oil company Lukoil, offered 10ppm diesel meeting British and French summer specs on two 35,000 tonne vessels. The Mount Robson, offered at a premium of +$55 to London June ICE gas oil, was for delivery into the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp, while the Cariad was offered into the same destination for delivery at the same price.
Bolivia completes takeover
LA PAZ: Bolivia’s leftist government said it completed the purchase of majority ownership of four energy companies by buying back shares in the firms as part of a nationalization drive started exactly two years ago.
In a paid advertisement in La Razon newspaper, state-run energy company YPFB said it took control of Andina, previously controlled by Spain’s Repsol YPF; Chaco, previously held by BP and Pan American Energy; and pipeline company Transredes, formerly controlled by Ashmore Energy International.
YPFB did not provide details of the operation that leftist President Evo Morales had promised to complete by April 30.
The government also said it completed the buyout of storage and fuel transport firm CLHB, controlled by German and Peruvian firms.
BP, Morgan take all deliveries
NEW YORK: Oil major BP took all the reformulated gasoline physically delivered against the expired May Nymex RBOB contract, according to exchange documents obtained by Reuters.
Wall Street trading house Morgan Stanley took delivery of all the heating oil delivered against the expired May No 2 oil contract, a total of 600,000 barrels, the document also showed.
The document said BP took delivery of just shy of one million barrels of RBOB gasoline in the New York Harbour.
Oil traders said prompt cash RBOB surged nearly three cents per gallon in the New York Harbor amid a shortage of immediate spot supplies of that gasoline grade in the hub.
Brazil to hike fuel prices
BRASILIA/RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil will raise refinery-gate gasoline prices 10 per cent and diesel prices by 15 per cent on May 2 in the first hike in 2-1/2 years, but a tax cut should reduce a subsequent rise in inflation, the government said.
The much-expected decision allowing state-run oil company Petrobras to raise the prices of two key fuels came after two days of meetings between Petrobras executives, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his ministers, who were concerned about stoking inflation.
Finance Minister Guido Mantega said shortly after Petrobras announced the hike that the government would reduce the so-called CIDE economic domain tax so motorists at the pump feel no impact from the refinery-gate gasoline jump.
Cairn India to open delivery point
MUMBAI: Oil explorer Cairn India Ltd, the Indian unit of Britain’s Cairn Energy, said it had received agreement from the Indian government to deliver its crude oil to Salaya in western India.
Cairn, which struck oil in Mangala, its biggest field, in the desert state of Rajasthan in 2004, will start production from that field in the second half of 2009, it said in a statement to the stock market.
Cairn India CEO Rahul Dhir told Reuters the company had received government approval to start production from Bhagyam, its second-biggest field, in the first half of 2010.
Exxon, Chevron raise dividends
NEW YORK: Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp, the two top US oil companies, said they would raise their dividends over 10 per cent as they pull in huge profits from record oil prices.
The oil companies have been criticized in some quarters for not raising their dividends enough, focusing instead on share buybacks as a method for returning profits to shareholders.
Exxon said it would raise its second-quarter dividend 14 per cent to 40 cents a share.
The dividend will be payable on June 10 to shareholders of record on May 13.
Helix Energy Q1 profit rises
NEW YORK: Helix Energy Solutions Group, an operator of offshore oil and gas properties and production facilities, posted a higher first-quarter profit, helped by increased revenue from oil and gas production and contracting services.
The company reported a net income of $74.3 million, or 79 cents per share, compared with $55.8 million, or 60 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose about 14 per cent to $450.7 million.
Analysts on average were expecting earnings of 72 cents a share, before special items, on revenue of $516.0 million, according to Reuters Estimates. Revenue from oil and gas rose about 30 per cent to $171.1 million, while revenue from contracting services increased about 6 per cent to $279.7 million. 
The growth was driven mainly by continued market demand in the deepwater and an increase in year-over-year commodity prices, the company said in a statement.
Altius’ new oil terminal cleared
CALGARY: Newfoundland and Labrador Refining Corp, in the race to build North America’s first new refinery in a generation, has received federal environmental approvals for its marine terminal, one of the firm’s shareholders said.
Altius Minerals, one of the backers of the proposed $4.6 billion refining project on Newfoundland’s Placentia Bay, said in a release that John Baird, Canada’s environment minister, had “announced a positive decision regarding the company’s Southern Head marine terminal and associated works.”
Chevron UK refinery to restart
LONDON: Chevron said its 210,000 barrel per day refinery in Pembroke, UK had been completely shut but it was in the process of restarting after a boiler problem caused the plant to lose steam.
A company spokeswoman said they were working to restart the boiler. “We expect it to take 48 hours to get it up and running,” she said. The cause of the outage is still under investigation, and would be continued once restart was complete.
Europe to shut 900kbpd
LONDON: European refiners are shutting around 900,000 barrels per day of capacity for maintenance work in April, a fraction less than the total April outage, a Reuters survey of refiners and traders showed.
A Reuters estimate put the total April outage just over 900,000 barrels per day for April, or 5.5 per cent of total capacity, while analysts’ estimates on the April outage ranged up to 1 million barrels per day, or around 6 per cent.The key feature of the May programme is the full shutdown of Total’s 227,000 barrels per day Leuna plant, an inland German refinery, due to last into June.
Petroecuador cuts refinery rate
QUITO: Petroecuador’s Esmeraldas refinery, the Opec nation’s largest with a daily capacity of 100,000 barrels of crude, is working at 90 per cent of its normal levels due to repairs, a company official said.
The refinery’s superintendent, Nelson Chulde, said the state company will take around two weeks to repair a damaged distillation unit.
Ecuador, South America’s fifth-largest oil producer, is planning to upgrade the refinery, where output suffers often from fires and scarce investment.The refinery supplies mostly the Andean country’s local demand for fuel.
West Coast refiners unaffected
SAN ANTONIO: US West Coast refiners said their operations were unaffected by a widespread one-day dock workers’ strike at Pacific Coast ports to protest the Iraq war.
Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Valero Energy Corp, Tesoro and Chevron  all said no problems were seen at their plants as the strike progressed. Most refiners said they didn’t know about the strike until reporters asked them if refinery operations were affected.
Golden Eagle restarting
SAN ANTONIO: Tesoro Corp said the work to connect a new coking unit at its 166,000 barrel per day (bpd) Golden Eagle refinery in the San Francisco Bay-area town of Martinez, California, was finished and refinery units are restarting after being shut since mid-March.
The refinery’s crude and coking units were shut March 17 so Tesoro could complete the $575 million project to upgrade coking capcity by converting from a fluid coker to a delayed coking unit.
Valero shuts Corpus Christi unit
NEW YORK: Valero Energy said that it has shut a 40,000 barrel per day crude distillation unit for a 14-day planned turnaround at its 340,000 bpd Corpus Christi, Texas, refinery.
The crude distillation unit, which is located in the West Plant of the Corpus Christi refining complex, is not considered one of the plant’s main processing unit because of its relatively small size, Valero spokesman Bill Day said. A vacuum unit, which is connected to the crude unit, will also be shut for the duration of the turnaround, according to Day.
Exxon reports utilities upset
HOUSTON: Exxon Mobil Corp’s 563,000 barrel per day (bpd) Baytown, Texas, refinery reported utilities upset to state pollution regulators saying the incident had no impact to production at the largest US refinery. A ground fault caused a loss of signal to instruments that regulate systems supplying natural gas and blend gas to the refinery’s utilities, according to a notice filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Delek Tyler refinery hit
HOUSTON: Delek US Holding’s 58,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Tyler, Texas, refinery was hit by a brief outage due to a severe storm, the company said in a notice filed with state pollution regulators.
The refinery re-established normal operations about two hours after the upset, according to the notice filed with the Texas Commission on Envrionmental Quality.
Shell unit back to normal
NEW YORK: Shell Oil expects an 88,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) coking unit at its Deer Park, Texas, refinery to be back to normal rates by early next week pending the repair of a sulphur recovery unit, a company spokesman said. “The coker is repaired but curtailed due to maintenance issue with a sulfur recovery unit,” spokesman David McKinney said in an email.
Apache sees higher profits
HOUSTON: US independent energy companies Apache Corp, Williams Cos and Noble Energy all reported higher first-quarter profits, benefiting from gains in crude oil and natural gas prices.
Benchmark US oil prices averaged a record of nearly $98 a barrel during the quarter, up nearly 70 per cent from a year earlier, and natural gas futures rose nearly 30 per cent.
Chevron delays Blind Faith start
NEW YORK:  Chevron Corp said it has delayed starting production at its Blind Faith project in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico until the second half of the year due to a problem with its mooring lines.Production was previously expected to start during the second quarter.
Blind Faith will produce about 70,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day shortly after production starts, the company said.
Denbury Q1 misses Street view
Mississippi: Oil and gas exploration company Denbury Resources reported first-quarter earnings below market expectations, hurt by a charge on derivative contracts, but reaffirmed its full-year production outlook.
Net income for the first quarter was $73.0 million, or 29 cents a share, compared with $16.6 million, or 7 cents a share, last year. Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of 39 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.
Exxon resumes production
LONDON: Exxon Mobil said it has restored some of its Nigerian crude oil production, which had been shut following a workers’ strike.
“ExxonMobil upstream affiliates in Nigeria confirm that they are in the process of restoring production, with current levels at approximately 300,000 barrels per day and increasing , following the resumption of services by the senior staff union on May 1,” the company said in a statement.
Hercules Q1 earnings better
Houston: Hercules Offshore, which provides drilling services to oil and gas producers, reported a better-than-expected first-quarter profit, as additional revenue from Todco, which it acquired last year, offset weakness in most of its segments.
The company reported net income of $4.5 million, or 5 cents a share, compared with $33.4 million, or $1.03 a share, in the same quarter last year. Analysts, on average, were expecting the company to report breakeven earnings per share, according to Reuters Estimates.
National Fuel Gas Q2 up
NEW YORK: National Fuel Gas Co  an explorer and distributor of natural gas, reported a 21 per cent rise in second-quarter profit that beat market estimates, helped mainly by increased production and higher average commodity prices.
The company also raised its earnings outlook for fiscal 2008 to a range of $2.90 and $3.00 per share. It had earlier expected to earn $2.60 to $2.80 per share. For the latest second quarter, National Fuel Gas reported a net income of $94.4 million, or $1.11 per share, compared with $78.4 million, or 92 cents per share, a year earlier.
Nopec Q1 pre-tax profit seen rising
OSLO: Norwegian seismic surveyor TGS-Nopec is expected to report a 14 per cent rise in  first-quarter pretax profit, a Reuters poll of analysts showed.
Pretax profit was seen rising to $58 million from $51 million in the same quarter a year earlier, according to the average of 11 forecasts which ranged from $52 million to $64 million. Soaring oil and gas prices have boosted petroleum exploration around the globe, lifting the oilfield services industry  including suppliers of seismic surveys.
Colombia Oxy sees output up
CANO LIMON: Occidental Petroleum expects gross output at two oil operations in Colombia to reach 135,000 barrels per day by 2011, up from current production of 111,000 bpd, a company executive said.
Occidental Colombia President David Stangor said production should rise from 15,000 bpd to around 50,000 bpd in the next three years at the La Cira Infantas field it shares with state oil company Ecopetrol in central Colombia.
Patterson-UTI Q1 profit falls
NEW YORK: Patterson-UTI Energy , an onshore oil and gas drilling contractor,  said first-quarter profit fell, hurt by weak operating income from its contract drilling segment. Profit in the quarter was $77.4 million, or 50 cents per diluted share, compared with $115.8 million, or 73 cents per diluted share in the same quarter a year earlier.
Petromonagas project boosts oil
CARACAS:Venezuela’s Petromonagas heavy oil upgrading project has increased the quality of its crude to make it more attractive on the international market, state television reported.
The move comes amid a continuing spat between the Opec nation and US oil giant Exxon Mobil over Venezuela’s 2007 nationalisation of the Petromonagas project that Exxon once operated.
Adnoc ups April OSP
ABU DHABI: The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) has raised the April retroactive selling price of its key Murban crude by $7.15 per barrel to $109.35, it said.
The March official selling price (OSP) for Murban was $102.20. Murban was set at a $5.938 premium to the April average for Dubai crude, which stood at $103.412 a barrel, versus a premium of $5.443 for March. Adnoc raised the price for Lower Zakum by $7.15 to $109.30 a barrel and that for Umm Shaif by $7.10 to $108.45 a barrel.
It set the Upper Zakum OSP at $104.30, up from $97.55 for March.
Iraq oil exports ease
LONDON: Iraqi oil exports eased by 60,000 barrels per day in April because of lower shipments from the country’s south, shipping data compiled by Reuters showed.
Exports averaged 1.86 million bpd during the month, comprising 1.43 million bpd from the south and 430,000 bpd from the north. Exports totalled 1.92 million bpd in March, according to Iraq’s oil ministry. Iraq has built up production to a level close to that before the US-led invasion in 2003 due to more stable flows from the north, where sabotage and technical problems previously kept supplies all but idle.
Sonatrach sells in Spain
ALGIERS: Algerian state-owned energy group Sonatrach said it had started selling liquefied natural gas (LNG) directly in Spain through its Spanish unit.A cargo of 30,000 cubic metres of LNG was delivered on April 7 to Sonatrach’s affiliate Gas Comercializadora (SGC) at the regasification terminal in Barcelona, Sonatrach said in a statement posted on its Web site.
“This event marks the launch of the commercial and operational activities of Sonatrach Gas Comercializadora (SGC), which has begun to supply gas to its first client on the Spanish market, Hidrocantabrico,” the statement added.
Iran denies gas pull out
TEHRAN: A senior Iranian oil official said he was not aware of any plan by Royal Dutch Shell and Spain’s Repsol  to withdraw from a $10 billion natural gas project in the Middle East country.
Spanish newspaper Expansion reported that the two oil majors were negotiating with the Iranian government to pull out of the gas plan due in part to US pressure. “I have seen nothing official on that and there has been no reference to that in any domestic negotiations,” Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, international affairs director of the National Iranian Oil Company, said when asked about the report.
Saudi hikes prices
DUBAI: Saudi Arabia raised its official selling prices for June for light crude oil to customers in Asia and cut them to the United States, state oil firm Saudi Aramco said.
The kingdom raised the price of Arab Light to customers in the Far East by 40 cents to the Oman/Dubai average plus $1.85 a barrel. It cut the Arab Light price for US customers by $1.00 a barrel to WTI minus $5.65.
Syria slashes subsidy
DAMASCUS: The Syrian government more than tripled the price of gas oil on Saturday, kicking off a programme to remove big subsidies on the fuel.
Pump owners said a litre of gas oil went up to the equivalent of 54 US cents from 15 cents. The state imports large volumes of the fuel at around $1 litre.