APS Review Gas Market Trends

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The Geology Of Qatar.
The prospects for finding oil in Qatar have improved considerably in the past 14 years, thanks to the geology in the country's territories and because international oil companies (IOCs) have applied . . .

Qatar - The Reserves.
Recoverable oil reserves in Qatar have been the subject of varied speculations. Independent sources put the recoverable oil reserves 27.5bn barrels, from 15 bn in 2007 and 4.7bn in 2000. They could . . .

Qatar - EPSAs Beyond The North Field.
With a 2006 moratorium on EPSAs in the North Field likely to remain in place until 2014, Doha is focusing its efforts on other areas. But the Emir, Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, could make an e . . .

Qatar - The Background.
After Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa's September 1992 cabinet reshuffle, when he was crown prince, the state-owned Qatar General Petroleum Corp (QGPC) was given control over the petroleum sector. E&P term . . .

Nigeria's Political Leadership.
It was on Dec. 17, 2006, that Nigeria's ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) selected the reclusive northern governor Yar'Adua as a candidate to the presidency to succeed Olusegun Obasanjo, who wa . . .

Nigeria - Yar'Adua's Family Background.
Back in the simple Yar'Adua home in Katsina, the framed pictures which crowd the walls display the family's political pedigree. Yar'Adua's father was a minister in Nigeria's first post-independence . . .

Nigeria - The State Elections & The Aftermath.
In the April 14, 2007, elections for state lawmakers and governors, held a week before the presidential polls, the results showed a big victory for the ruling PDP. The new governors of the three key . . .

Nigeria - Olusegun Obasanjo.
Obasanjo remains a powerful man under Yar'Adua's presidency. He is still the most powerful man in the ruling PDP, although Yar'Adua has begun to sideline his political mentor. A military man turned . . .

Nigeria Backs Down On Big LNG Export Ambitions.
It was not until mid-2007 that planners talked of JVs to raise Nigeria's LNG exports from 18m tons/year in 2007 to more than 80m t/y by 2016. Shell, world leader in the LNG business, was planning to . . .

The Global Perspective & Effect On Abuja.
There is a mounting glut of LNG on both sides of Suez, not only due to a global recession which has hit the world hard since mid-2008 but also because of supplies from so many new liquefaction plant . . .

NLNG Expansions.
NLNG exports from five trains, with a capacity of 18m t/y. Train 6 in early 2008 brought this to 22m t/y of LNG and 5m t/y of NGLs. But Train 6 remains suspended. Since October there have been quest . . .

Olokola LNG.
Shortly before leaving office after eight years as president in May 2007, Olusegun Obasanjo performed a ground-breaking ceremony for the commencement of the Olokoka LNG project (OK-LNG). He then sai . . .

ExxonMobil LNG Project At Bonny.
Mobil Producing Nigeria (MPN), the local unit of ExxonMobil, in early 2005 signed an MoU with NNPC for a pre-feasibility study for a 4.8m t/y, single-train LNG export facility to be located on Bonny . . .

Floating LNG Projects Proposed.
A number of floating LNG (FLNG) projects off Nigeria have been proposed in recent years. One of the latest FLNG proposals was made in early 2009, when Nigeria-based Danba GTL and BW offshore company . . .

Shell-Statoil FLNG Venture.
It was reported in 2005 that a proposed merging of Statoil's Nnwa and Shell's Doro gas fields in adjacent offshore OPLs218 and 219 would lead to a FLNG venture between the two firms and their partne . . .

Flex LNG.
Flex LNG in September 2008 contracted Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) of South Korea for the engineering procurement construction installation and commissioning work on a 1.5m t/y FLNG unit. Flex LNG . . .

Floating African LNG Venture.
Upstream on March 16, 2007, reported that African LNG (AfLNG) of the UK had been set up for a 1m t/y FLNG export plant in a shallow-water part of Nigeria. It said AfLNG had commissioned London-based . . .

NNPC-Hyundai LNG Shipping Firm.
NNPC and a South Korean consortium led by Hyundai Heavy Industries on March 2, 2007, signed an agreement setting up a joint LNG shipping company incorporated in Nigeria under the name of Nikorma Tra . . .

WAPCO Pipeline.
The West Africa Gas Pipeline Co. (WAPCO) started up in late 2008 to supply Nigerian gas to Ghana, Benin and Togo initially at 50 MCF/d. This was raised in early 2009 to 134 MCF/d, with final capacit . . .

Trans-Sahara/Europe P/L.
Sonatrach and NNPC have launched campaigns to win financial backing for a 15 bn Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP) to pump 30 BCM/y of Nigerian gas to Europe via Niger and Algeria. Construction of th . . .

Nigeria's Oil & Gas Fields - ExxonMobil Operations.
Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited (MPN) has an output of 600,000 b/d of crude oil and 100,000 b/d of condensate. Its oil and condensate production capacity is 750,000 b/d. MPN has been investing $11 . . .

Nigeria's Oil & Gas Fields - Erha & Erha North.
Apart from the two JVs, ExxonMobil has PSCs for offshore tracts, where water depths exceed 1,000 metres. These include Erha and its northern satellite in the west of the delta, which Mobil found in . . .

Nigeria's Oil & Gas Fields - Chevron Operations.
Chevron Nigeria operates the Escravos group of oilfields in the Niger Delta which have a nominal capacity of 550,000 b/d, but with 400,000 b/d still shut in because of violence and it will take mont . . .

Nigeria - Big Gas Projects.
With Chevron estimating associated and free gas reserves in its 2.2m acre areas at 17 TCF, the $569m Phase-I of the Escravos gas gathering project (EGP-1) came on stream in late April 1997. This has . . .

Nigeria's Oil & Gas Fields - Total's Operations.
Elf Petroleum Nigeria Ltd, part of Total, has seen its production capacity rise to 230,000 b/d - with the coming on stream of the Amanam-Kpono production system. Amenam-Kpono reached a plateau of 12 . . .

Nigeria - Total's Downstream Assets.
Incorporated as a private firm in 1956, Total Nigeria PLC became public in 1978, and is today quoted on the Nigeria Stock Exchange. Its main activity is marketing of fuels and LPG. But it has divers . . .

The Geology Of Nigeria.
Nigeria is on the west coast of Africa, on latitudes 4 deg. north of the Equator and latitudes 3 deg. and 14 deg. on the east of the Greenwich Meridian. It shares boundaries with the republics of Be . . .

Nigeria - The Petroleum Reserves.
In February 2007, the then state minister for petroleum Dr. Edmund Daukoru put Nigeria's proven oil reserves at about 35bn barrels, a major increase from 5bn barrels in 1999. The government then sai . . .

Nigeria - Exploration.
Every year, the DPR offers a number of blocks in auctions, with Abuja's awards depending on the size of the signature bonuses companies are prepared to pay (see the background in gmt5NigrGeoJul30-07 . . .

Nigeria - History of Oil Exploration.
Oil was discovered in Nigeria in 1956 at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta after half a century of exploration. The find was made by Shell-BP, at the time the sole concessionaire. Nigeria joined the oil p . . .

Nigeria - Focus On The Gas Sector & Petroleum Reform Bill.
On Dec. 4, 2008, State Minister for Petroleum Ajumogobia told reporters Abuja was evaluating foreign and domestic firms to help in gas E&P and 48 companies had expressed interest in working on this . . .

Nigeria - E&P Deal Changes Contested.
South Korea's National Oil Corp (KNOC) on March 18 went to court in Nigeria to challenge Abuja's cancellation of offshore oil E&P rights granted by the previous administration. Abuja in 2005 awarded . . .

Nigeria - E&P Developments.
NNPC's E&P arm Nigerian Petroleum Development Co. (NPDC) in June 2009 said it has found crude oil from its OML-64 in Delta State. The well was drilled to 11,150 ft and encountered six major interval . . .

Nigeria - Sinopec.
The state-owned China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) on June 19 said it was in July to drill its first exploration well in Block-2 of the Nigeria-Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Zone (J . . .

Nigeria - Gazprom.
The Kremlin-controlled gas giant Gazprom on June 24 signed a co-operation deal with NNPC during visit to Abuja by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev said Moscow could invest up to $2.5 bn i . . .

Libya's Govt - The Political Leadership & The 1st Logic.
On Sept. 1, 1969, Col. Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi and 11 fellow "free officers" (the RCC) staged their coup d'etat against the Sanoussi monarchy. Since then there have been several cycles of structural cha . . .

Qadhafi & Capitalism.
For decades, Qadhafi had been against both the capitalist West and the Communist camp, having devoted his own brand of socialism which he occasionally called "Third International" and this is contai . . .

Tripoli Still Awaiting US Reward.
Yet since 2004, Qadhafi and his aides have been complaining that Libya did not gain what it had tought should be its right rewards for the WMDs it had given up. They keep saying Washington has faile . . .

Libya - Russian Ties.
On April 16-17, then Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Libya and, after talks with Qadhafi, agreed to write off $4.5bn in Libyan debts dating to the 1980s in exchange for $10bn worth of deals . . .

Libya - Ambiguous Reforms.
Shaped by the whims of Qadhafi, Libya remains a quasi-socialist state where political parties are banned and no dissent is tolerated. Libya's heavily centralised economy is still dominated by the pu . . .

Libya - The Opposition.
There have been a number of attempts in Libya to oust Qadhafi's regime. Qadhafi himself tends to produce more enemies than real friends with his antics. The October 1993 coup attempt and the subsequ . . .

Libya - The System.
What Qadhafi has created is de-centralised and centralised decision making bodies. There are over 3,000 committees which meet twice a year on health, education and finance. There is a 3,000-member c . . .

Libyan Pipeline Gas Export Volumes To Italy Fluctuate Seasonally.
Libya, Africa's fourth-largest natural gas producer, can increase gas exports to Italy by up to 20% of the contracted volume in winter as a result of higher demand. The contracted volume with state- . . .

The Background.
Agip Gas BV (a unit of ENI North Africa BV), the Agip/NOC JV in charge of the WLGP and Greenstream, on Feb. 9, 2000 signed a 24-year contract to supply Edison Gas of Italy with 4 BCM/y. On Nov. 16, . . .

European Reliance On Libyan Energy.
Greenstream has made Libya an important source of gas to Italy and a part of Central Europe, as Edison is marketing some of the Libyan gas in Slovania and Croatia. Italy already relies heavily on Li . . .

ENI-Gazprom Partnerships & Russian Thrust Into African Gas Export Plans.
There has been an interesting string of partnerships and asset swap deals between ENI and Gazprom, with the latter having become a key tool of Russia's geo-politics. Gazprom in 2007-08 offered to ac . . .

Other Italian P/L Proposals.
ENI in recent years proposed linking the reserves of both Egypt and Libya to Italy by pipeline. This would require a bigger investment and longer time. The political leadership in Tripoli no longer . . .

Gas E&P Blocks On Offer.
Much of the acreage offered in Tripoli's first international gas exploration round, launched on July 8, 2007, had little prospectivity and did not attract major IOCs. NOC then offered exploration an . . .

The LNG Business.
Less than 1 BCM/y are liquefied at Marsa el-Brega and shipped to Spain on LNG tankers. Shell is upgrading the LNG plant in a project which has been dragging on for years since the major signed a wid . . .

The BP Deal.
Under a wide-ranging gas E&P deal with NOC signed on May 29, 2007, BP could spend up to $25 bn in Libya to develop a major LNG export venture. Returning to Libya after a gap of more than 30 years, B . . .