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Middle East makes inroads into Alberta oil patch
John Partridge, Globe and Mail
In a startling reversal of history, a Middle Eastern energy company is pushing into the Canadian oil and gas market looking for secure supplies, and, thanks to a battle with activist shareholders on this continent, it may be getting a good deal in the process.
Abu Dhabi National Energy Co. (TAQA) said Tuesday it has struck a deal to buy North Rock Resources Ltd., a Calgary-based oil and gas exploration firm, for $2-billion (U.S.) from Pogo Producing Co. of Houston.
Northrock president David Pearce said he thinks that, assuming Investment Canada approves the deal, it would make TAQA the first Middle Eastern company to become an owner in the Canadian oil patch. “It is my understanding through preliminary discussions that they have a desire to diversify into relatively secure geographies.”
(29 May 2007)
Deals signed on pipeline that seeks to divert Malacca Strait oil
AFP / Yahoo
Malaysian, Indonesian and Saudi Arabian firms on Monday signed agreements for construction of a pipeline that aims to divert 20 percent of oil flowing through the strategic Malacca Strait, the project owner said. ..
“When the entire project is completed in 2014, TRANSPEN pipeline will divert about 20 percent of oil transiting through Straits of Malacca, proportionately easing the congestion in the Straits,” Trans-Peninsula said in a statement. ..
Half of the world’s oil shipments currently pass through the 960-kilometre (595-mile) Strait of Malacca, the busiest seaway in the world, which links the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The Strait was notorious for pirate attacks but security officials, who fear the economic and strategic ramifications of any disruption to the vital maritime traffic, say security has vastly improved. ..
“It’s a very expensive solution to a problem that doesn’t seem that severe, frankly,” said Jason Feer, of energy market analysts Argus Media Ltd in Singapore. While traders would save three days’ sailing time, the logistics involved and the cost of using the pipeline would leave “a pretty marginal benefit,” he said. “In the end, the big test will be, will banks loan them money to build this?” Feer told AFP.
(29 May 2007)
Pickens eyes $70 mln for Clean Energy IPO
Steve Gelsi, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Energy baron and 1980s corporate raider Boone Pickens will add more than $70 million to his billion-dollar-plus fortune with Friday’s debut of an initial public offering from Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a company he co-founded and invested in.
The IPO is tapping into strong demand for energy-related companies both from the traditional oil and gas businesses as well as alternative energy players from the solar and ethanol sectors.
Clean Energy Fuels Corp. traces its roots to the 1980s, when Pickens, “became convinced that natural gas had a number of advantages over gasoline and diesel as a vehicle fuel,” the company said in its IPO prospectus.
Over the next 15 years, Pickens and Clean Energy CEO Andrew Littlefair worked to develop the market through vehicle fleets that run on natural gas, which burns cleaner than gasoline or diesel. Natural gas is also widely produced in North America, unlike imported oil.
Pickens, known as a corporate raider in the 1980s after amassing a fortune in the oil and natural gas business, invested about $32 million in cash in the company between 2004 and 2006 and floated the company a $50 million line a credit to fund margin calls related to its futures contracts, according to the company’s IPO filing. The credit line was increased to $100 million in 2006. ..
(23 May 2007)
APEC to Study Impact of State-Owned Oil Companies
Shigeru Sato and Angela Macdonald-Smith, Bloomberg
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation energy ministers plan to study the impact that state-owned oil and gas companies is having on trade and investment, according to a draft communique.
The 21-member body, including China, the U.S. and Russia, will set up a working group to assess how to cooperate with state-owned companies, according to the draft statement obtained by Bloomberg News in advance of the final communique later today.
Ministers from APEC, which accounts for 60 percent of global oil and gas demand, are meeting in Darwin, Australia, to discuss energy security and minimizing harmful emissions. The group’s dependency on oil imports is set to rise at a time when governments led by Russia and Venezuela are seizing oil assets from private companies.
“It’s a problem that private, international oil companies find it difficult to develop reserves,” Claude Mandil, the International Energy Agency’s executive director, said in an interview today. “Partnerships of state-controlled and private oil companies are needed, but the way to cooperate hasn’t been invented.”
(29 May 2007)
Is the story of Iraq’s ‘massive untapped oil reserves’ fact or fictions?
Sharif Ali, Azzaman,
The restive Province of Anbar grabbed the headlines of world media recently. But the news, fortunately, was not related to the ongoing violence and ferocious resistance of U.S. occupation the province has been reputed for in the past four years.
Suddenly, world media focused their attention on significant oil reserves of 100 billion barrels. And where? In the western desert and specifically in Ramadi Province.
The reports ostensibly left no doubt that the province sits on gigantic oil fields which, if exploited, would place Iraq ahead of Saudi Arabia as he world’s top oil producer.
The reports were based on a study by energy analysts I.H.S.
The figures took Iraqi oil experts and analysts by surprise and they have their own reasons to be suspicious of the estimates and the timing of their announcement.
The Province of Anbar is Iraq’s largest, occupying 31.1 percent of Iraq’s area of 434,934 square kilometers.
The province, the scourge of U.S. invasion troops, is inhabited by 1.3 million people and more than 95 percent of its land is barren desert.
Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) carried out seismic surveys of the province and dug numerous oil wells between 1955 and 1061 [sic – probably 1961].
The National oil Company made its own surveys which continued for over two decades and only came to a halt after the imposition of punitive U.N. trade sanctions in 1990.
During the same period major oil firms like ExxonMobil, Japex (Japan Petroleum Exploration), Ascom, Petronas and Repsol made extensive surveys through joint agreements signed with the Ministry of Oil.
The reports of all these surveys, which are part of the Oil Ministry’s archives, were discouraging and could not come up with categorical results that the western desert, that is the area falling within the provincial borders of Anbar, holds substantial oil or gas reserves.
That conclusion was substantiated by an article in MEES, the authoritative Middle East Economic Survey, in a report about the results of 2004 surveys by American geological groups which said the area’s oil reserves run between half a billion and one billion and a half of proven reserves.
Brushing all these findings aside, the U.S. energy analysts I.H.S., for reasons yet to be uncovered, reveals surprising and shocking figures of estimates totaling 100 billion barrels.
Who are we to believe? Is it logical and sane to doubt the surveys by IPC, the National Oil Company, giant foreign oil firms and recent surveys by U.S. groups and believe the I.H.S?
I.H.S. report smacks of politicization. It was written and made public with the aim of pacifying the violent and restive province by telling its rebellious population it is better for them to lay down their arms and make use of their oil riches under the new oil law and federal system.
(29 May 2007)
According to Mondo Times:
Azzaman is a Iraq newspaper covering news: general.
The Azzaman newspaper is edited by Saad Bazzaz, a former Iraqi media chief who fell out with Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1992. Azzaman is Arabic for “the Times.”
Huge gas reserves found in southwest China
AFP / Yahoo
China has discovered huge gas reserves in the southwestern province of Sichuan, hoping that the find will help ease growing concerns about energy security, state media reported Monday.
A total of 3.8 trillion cubic metres (133 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas deposits have been found in the western part of the Sichuan Basin, the China Daily said, citing officials in Dazhou city, near the reserve.
The discovery is equivalent to about 60 years of China’s total production at current output levels.
The deposits include proven exploitable reserves of a newly-discovered 244 billion cubic metres of gas alongside the 356 billion cubic metres in Puguang gas field, which was announced in March, the report said.
It has become the largest gas field in the country, topping the Sulige gas field in north China’s Inner Mongolia Region discovered last year with exploitable reserves of 533.6 billion cubic metres, the newspaper said. ..
(28 May 2007)
