Oman has signed an exploration and production sharing agreement with Swedish firm Tethys Oil for its onshore block 58, the company said July 5. The block is located in the southern part of the sultanate adjacent to Tethys Oil’s operated exploration licence block 49. Tethys Oil will be the operator of the block, through its wholly owned subsidiary Tethys Oil Qatbeet Ltd., and hold a 100% license interest. Block 58 was one of six offered in Oman’s 2019 upstream tenders, and the other licenses are yet to be awarded. The ...

The cash/futures spread for benchmark Dubai crude widened on July 6, following announcements of higher official selling prices by Saudi Aramco for the fresh trading cycle. The spread — a key indicator of spot market sentiment for sour crude in Asia — widened to a premium of $1.07/b at the 4:30 pm (0830 GMT) Singapore close on July 6, up 6 cents/b day on day. During the Platts Market on Close assessment process, two 25,000-barrel partials traded on July 6. This comprised of one September Dubai partial traded between buyer ...

China on late July 3 announced the termination of its two sets of management rules governing the oil product and crude markets, relaxing the barriers for investors on starting wholesale, retail and storage business in the two commodity markets. The Ministry of Commerce, or MOFCOM, terminated the “Management Rules on Oil Product Market” and the “Management Rules on Crude Market” in order to implement the “Regulations On Optimizing The Business Environment” and reform management in petroleum circulation, the ministry’s Order No. 1 of 2020 dated July 1 showed. The Chinese ...

South Africa’s Sasol said July 6 it has decided to relinquish two licenses offshore Mozambique to the government in a new setback for the southeast African country’s upstream sector. Sasol held licenses for offshore blocks 16 and 19 since 2005, but has now opted to hand back the licenses. “Following an evaluation of the exploration potential of the blocks and an assessment of the report of the pre-feasibility phase of the Environmental Impact Assessment, Sasol has decided to relinquish its exploration license in Blocks 16 and 19 offshore Mozambique,” it ...

Crude oil production resumed early July at the Wafra oilfield, shared by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, after a five-year halt, the Kuwaiti oil ministry said on Twitter on Monday. The Wafra and Khafji oilfields are located in the Neutral Zone on the boundary of the two countries. Saudi Arabian Chevron (SAC), which jointly operates the Wafra field with Kuwait Gulf Oil Company (KGOC), said in a statement in June that the two companies were making preparations to resume operations. Initial output at the Wafra oilfield is seen at 10,000 bpd, ...

The state-owned Oil India on Monday stated that they witnessed a production loss of 40 million tonnes (MT) of crude oil as on July 04, 2020, due to stoppage/blockades. However, the company’s stock remained unaffected from the announcement and continued to trade in the green. To exchanges, Oil India said, “Due to stoppage/blockades, there was production loss of 40MTof Crude Oil and 0.10MMSCM of Natural Gas as reported on 04-07-2020. Operations were disrupted in 03 Oil wells.” As of July 01, there was production loss of 47 MT of Crude ...

Saudi Arabia’s state oil producer Aramco has hiked official selling prices (OSPs) for its crude to Asia by $1 a barrel in August, and raised the OSPs for almost all grades to Europe and the United States. Saudi Arabia has set the August price to Asia at plus $1.20 a barrel versus the Oman/Dubai average, Aramco said in a statement on Monday. The increase was in line with market expectations on rising Middle East benchmarks and a rebound in Asian refining margins, a Reuters survey found. Although the rise in ...

The coronavirus pandemic will have a dramatic impact on energy supply and demand in the short term and will have lasting impacts once the pandemic dissipates. However, that will in itself do little to advance the world’s progress towards the Paris climate ambitions. Energy use is strongly linked to economic activity, which has, and will continue to be, significantly impacted by the novel coronavirus pandemic: Our energy forecast is predicated on IMF’s longer outbreak scenario, where World GDP will shrink 6% in 2020. The lingering effects of the pandemic will ...

Subsea technology has drastically improved in the last two decades in terms of functionality and reliability, with notable strides made in areas such as subsea processing, subsea storage, subsea-to-shore and power distribution. This has enabled upstream companies to expand the scale of their deepwater projects, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company. GlobalData’s latest thematic report, ‘Subsea Technologies for Oil and Gas Offshore Exploration and Production (E&P)’, notes that advancements in subsea technology are paving the way for a more complete subsea system, controlled from onshore, providing cost and ...

One after the other major international oil companies (IOCs) are announcing new and massive asset write-downs as a result of the low global oil and gas prices and their impact on their business. These are in effect ‘stranded-assets’ that once had a value but can no longer be produced as a result of low prices and may have to be ‘left in the ground.’ The latest to do so is Shell that announced on June 30 that it is writing off up to $22 billion of the value of its ...

Predictably ignored, one could argue that the biggest energy reality that we face is very low natural gas prices encouraging more infrastructure and demand. Low gas prices forecast over the mid- and long-term are going unmentioned as the driving force behind our “dash to gas.” This year since mid-January, U.S. gas prices have been below $2.00 per MMBtu, an insanely low price for increasingly the world’s go-to fuel. Let me be clear, the floor for gas prices over the past four years has been $2.50. Moreover, at $1.44 last week, ...

Oil prices were mixed on Monday, with Brent crude edging higher, supported by tighter supplies and positive economic data, while U.S. benchmark WTI futures dropped on concern that a spike in coronavirus cases could curb fuel demand in the United States. Brent crude was up 41 cents, or 1%, to $43.21 per barrel by 1042 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was down 5 cents, or 0.1%, at $40.60. “We believe that oil market participants are focusing on the current demand trends but are still ignoring the long-term implications ...

Intermonth spreads for benchmark Dubai crude futures narrowed slightly during mid-morning trade in Asia July 6, as expectations of upcoming producer price hikes continued to keep sentiment tepid. At 11 am in Singapore (0300 GMT), the August/September Dubai crude futures spread was pegged at a 17-cent/b backwardation, narrowing 4 cents/b from the Asian close on July 3, S&P Global Platts data showed. The September/October spread was pegged at a backwardation of 8 cents/b, narrowing a cent/b from the Asian close on July 3. Saudi Aramco is expected to raise the ...

As the COVID-19 pandemic bashes economies and demand for oil, many African nations dependent on exporting fossil fuels are “haemorrhaging” cash, African energy experts warned this week. The crisis – which comes as more investors shun carbon-heavy businesses – is a taste of what may happen if Africa’s rich oil and gas reserves become “stranded assets” that cannot be pumped as the world shifts to clean energy to meet climate goals. Fatima Denton, director of the United Nations University Institute for Natural Resources in Africa, said such a situation had ...

Who won the previous round of the oil price war? Some are now asserting that China — the world’s largest crude importer — emerged victorious at the expense of major global crude oil producers. The battle erupted in March when Russia declined to give in to the Saudi demand to cut output further. Yet, the very next month, US President Donald Trump intervened directly and the battle had to be abandoned. But by the time, the damage had already been done. The cost was immense to major stakeholders, Saudi Arabia, ...