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Lovemelongtime - the Nigerian fish rap newspaper articles are just opinions from those who write thm. They have opinions about SEO, just like you. Maybe in some instances, they know more than you. Maybe in some instances, you know more than them. Everybody has an opinion.
I typically just post articles I find. If you look back at all my posts, I would guess that ~90% are basically me posting articles I find. It's up to the reader to decide what to make of post.
Some of the Nigerian articles I believe, some I don't. Just like our papers here in the USA some I believe, some I don't.
ND9
Walldog, oh, ok, so now you are saying that the real power is the PDP..........
That's somewhat different than earlier today when you said, "SEO got us here, when no one else on the planet could have done it...NO ONE!"
ND9
PS - Oh, and by the way, if you're important enough, I'm sure SEO will take your phone call.
Walldog0 - You might want to read the article I just posted. The source didn't say SEO had the power, the source said that when SEO comes to their office, they know he (SEO) is speaking for the Minister and the President (i.e., the real power)........
However, that's just me posting one Nigerian article. I'm surely not an expert on SEO like you are. Hey, since you know so much about him, including all his powers, maybe you can give him a call...... then give us some insight into the future of ERHC?
ND9
Homeport - yep, thanks. Let's hope for the best.
ND9
You're missing the point. Walldog0 makes SEO out to be some GOD like hero...... My point is simple. SEO isn't able to make all these deals on his own. He's backed by some incredibly powerful people like the President of Nigeria.........
Read the article I posted, where the source tells the newspaper, SEO isn't coming here acting on his own, when he comes here, he's speaking for the Minister and President! That's my point. It's quite simple.
In addition, I'm just saying, let's keep it real. Don't trash SEO and don't pump him up to be some GOD. If you read Nigerian articles on SEO, you'll see that even Nigerian opinions vary.........
ND9
ND9
World Developments 2006 - JDZ
http://www.searchanddiscovery.net/documents/2007/07006discoveries2006/images/2007disc.pdf
Nigeria: Nigeria Hosts 11th Offshore Conference
Daily Champion (Lagos)
March 15, 2007
Posted to the web March 15, 2007
Erasmus Alaneme
Abuja
Nigeria will between the 20th to 22nd of this month play host to over 2,000 trade visitors and delegates from over 25 countries in this year's 11th Offshore West Africa (OWA) conference and exhibition billed to take place at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.
Spokesperson of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) who also doubles as the chairman, Nigeria's Oil and Gas Industry Planning Committee on OWA, Levi Ajuonuma who spoke to journalists in Abuja stated that apart from OWA conference being at home in the country, there will be higher number of trade visitors from more countries at this year's event.
Ajuonuma explained that the decision to continue hosting the conference in Nigeria was based on an overall national objective of making Nigeria the hub of petroleum activities in sub-Saharan Africa as well as expose many Nigerian professionals to the latest technology in deep offshore at cheaper cost.
Relevant Links
West Africa
Nigeria
Trade
Petroleum
Speaking on the theme of the conference which is " Venturing Into New Depths," he pointed out that the Nigeria oil and gas industry through a highly improved exhibition and very active participation at the technical conference will showcase the increasing level of E&P activities in the country's offshore and deep water basins, and unfold the immense investment potentials the region holds for discerning investors"
It is pertinent to point out that OWA is an annual event with the mission to advance the african offshore exploration and production industry by making available relevant information about local content, safety and operational issues affecting the blossoming industry. it also addresses the technical and commercial challenges.
This year's event will have presentations covering a lot of topics like local content and sustainable development; offshore drilling technology and completion; field architecture and development; offshore pipelines and flow assurance; Subsea technology, Fas monetization and regional challenges, assets integrity among others.
SEO is President Obasanjo’s voice in this office
"We were told ahead of time, before the bidding that bloc 291 should not be included in the auction that it was reserved for Emeka Offor and we all know that Emeka Offor is the President Obasanjo’s voice in this office.”
"SEO is not here on his personal capacity"
“Whenever he comes to our office, we know he is not here on his personal capacity but with both the minister and the President Obasanjo’s approval so he gets whatever he asks for.” The source told said.
Claude - there is a reason SEO can make these deals - look at the full article below, specifically the second to the last paragraph......... it says, “Whenever he comes to our office, we know he is not here on his personal capacity but with both the minister and the President Obasanjo’s approval so he gets whatever he asks for.” The source told said.
So there's a reason he can make these deals and it's President Obasanjo........ Let's see how it goes after the upcoming elections.
I'm long and strong on ERHC (and praying).
ND9
***************************************************************
Aso Rock Of Corruption: Obasanjo, Emeka Offor In $35 Million Dollar Oil Fraud!
BY Sunny Ofili
DATE : Wednesday, 15 November 2006
The director of the Department of Petroleum Resources, Tony Chukwueke was fired yesterday over what insiders described as “impropriety in the award of oil blocs” in the mini-bid that ended this past May. While Chukwueke’s firing has rocked the petroleum industry, there are fears that the sack might be just a tip of the iceberg.
Director of DPR, Tony Chukwueke, was fired yesterday.
The director of the Department of Petroleum Resources, Tony Chukwueke was fired yesterday over what insiders described as “impropriety in the award of oil blocs” in the mini-bid that ended this past May. While Chukwueke’s firing has rocked the petroleum industry, there are fears that the firing might be just a tip of the iceberg.
The Times of Nigeria investigation revealed that Tony Chukwueke is being used as a fall guy over the massive corruption in Nigeria’s petroleum industry. His ordeal started two weeks ago when the Financial Times of London quoted Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, as saying that the agency is probing the award of one of the 18 oil blocs offered in the mini-bid round.
At the center of this monumental case of fraud is the right for Oil Prospecting License (OPL) 291, one of the eight deep offshore blocs adjacent to the acreage operated by Chevron.
During the May auction, 16 blocks were offered and bided for. The lucrative OPL 291 was not one of them.
The oil industry was jolted when a Canadian company, Addax Petroleum Corp. announced on October 23 2006 that it has signed a production sharing (PSC) agreement with a little-known Nigerian oil services company, Starcrest Energy owned by Emeka Offor.
“Addax Petroleum Corporation’s wholly owned subsidiary has entered into a farm-out agreement with Starcrest Nigeria Energy Limited (“Starcrest”), an indigenous Nigerian oil company pursuant to which Addax Petroleum and Starcrest have signed a Production Sharing Contract (“PSC”) with Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (“NNPC”) in respect of Oil Prospecting License (“OPL”) 291 deepwater offshore Nigeria. Addax Petroleum has a participating interest of 72.5 per cent and is the operator.” Addax said in its press statement. Addax said in a statement announcing the deal last month.
According to Jean Claude Gandur, President and Chief Executive Officer of Addax Petroleum, “The addition of OPL291 to our deepwater exploration portfolio is truly exciting. The highly prospective nature of the property is underlined by its proximity to the nearby world-class Agbami oil field which is currently under development. We believe that OPL291 offers significant potential to our company and its shareholders.”
“OPL291 represents the mandatory relinquishment area of OPL216 following conversion of OPL216 to Oil Mining Lease (“OML”) 127 preceding the development of the Agbami field in OML127 by Chevron. OPL291 was tendered by the Nigerian government under the 2006 mini bid round and was recently awarded to Starcrest.”
“Pursuant to the PSC, Addax Petroleum and Starcrest (i) shall pay a PSC signature bonus to NNPC of US$55 million, (ii) shall undertake an initial investment of US$75 million covering an initial work commitment which comprises the acquisition of 3D seismic and drilling one well and (iii) have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with NNPC to undertake an investment in an Independent Power Project (“IPP”) which would be developed with gas from a commercial development in OPL291 and agreement with NNPC on the technical and commercial arrangements should the IPP proceed.”
According to the statement, Addax Petroleum is obligated to the following:
• to pay to the Nigerian government, 100 per cent of the OPL291 PSC signature bonus of US$55 million;
• to pay to Starcrest, a farm-in fee of US$35 million; and
• to pay Starcrest’s share of OPL291 exploration and development costs which will be reimbursed to Addax Petroleum from Starcrest’s share of production revenues from OPL291.
Starcrest Energy, a shell company with no office and track record in the oil industry pockets $35 million dollars and partake in profit sharing when the oil well becomes operational.
Starcrest Energy is headquartered at a private residence (with a small swimming pool) in a Plano, TX, suburban tract home belonging to Emeka offor. Little is known about that firm other than it was registered early this year and has no tract record in the oil industry anywhere in the world.
“The Addax/Starcrest deal was probably the last straw. $35 million for a briefcase-carrying rent seeker really stinks. There has been a lot of foul cry since the deal was announced last month,” the insider said.
The source added that many observers have long held that all was not well within the Nigerian petroleum leadership and Chukwueke’s dismissal could be just the tip of the iceberg. “Permenant Secretary Amunna Lawal is said to have been relieved too; and there are whispers that Dakouru (Nigeria’s Oil Minister) may follow suit after the forthcoming OPEC meeting hosted by Nigeria.”
The questions being asked by insiders are who really owns Starcrest Energy? Did the director of DPR, Tony Chukwueke act alone in his unilateral act of awarding bloc OPL 291 to Starcrest Energy or was he simply taking orders from his superiors?
The Times of Nigeria tried to reach Chukwueke for answers. His phone rang without response during the initial call and subsequent calls went to his voicemail – an indication that the line had been switched off.
However, a source at the DPR who claims he was speaking with Chukwueke’s approval but pleaded not to be named as his job could be jeopardized said “He (Tony Chukwueke) could not have awarded an oil block to anyone without the approval of the Minister. The minister ordered him to reserve that block for the President. Everyone in DPR knows that. They are making him a scapegoat.”
“We were told ahead of time, before the bidding that bloc 291 should not be included in the auction that it was reserved for Emeka Offor and we all know that Emeka Offor is the President Obasanjo’s voice in this office.”
“Whenever he comes to our office, we know he is not here on his personal capacity but with both the minister and the President Obasanjo’s approval so he gets whatever he asks for.” The source told said.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is believed to have already interviewed some people at the DPR during its preliminary investigation. However, insiders have called on the National Assembly to institute a probe panel to investigate the DPR and its awards of oil blocs.
Aban may lock horns with RIL
...Disputes Reliance’s right to terminate contract
CORPORATE BUREAU
Posted online: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 0000 hours IST
CHENNAI, MUMBAI, MAR 13: Aban Offshore Ltd, country’s largest private sector offshore drilling company, seems to be on a collision course with Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) over the latter's decision to unilaterally terminate a drilling contract with it.
Aban on Tuesday said that it ‘disputes’ RIL’s rights to terminate the contract. This is the first time that Aban is facing a termination of drilling contract in the near future. The company has a long list of drilling agreements with leading players including a $123 million drilling contract with Addax Petroleum Corporation of Canada and Chinese firm Sinopec and ONGC.
Aban, in a regulatory filing with stock exchanges on Tuesday said that the company's subsidiary Deep Drilling 1 Pte Ltd (DD1) has received a notice of termination from RIL relating to the drilling contract entered into for deployment of Rig Deep Driller 1.
“The Rig was expected to start on the Reliance contract within a few weeks, following successful completion of contract with Hardy Exploration. The company's subsidiary disputes RIL’s right to terminate the contract. The company's subsidiary is making arrangements to mobilise the Rig to Singapore and will continue to market the Rig on a world wide basis. The company's subsidiary considers the market conditions for this kind of unit to be very attractive”.
Despite repeated attempts, officials of Aban Offshore were not available for comment. The company’s stock went down by over 2.54% to Rs 1,820.25 on the National Stock Exchange after the news reached the markets on Tuesday.
However, sources close to the company said that Aban is on a sound legal footing to challenge the RIL decision to snap the partnership as it has not given any valid reason for terminating the contract. Aban was to start the drilling work for RIL in a few week’s time, they added. Further details of the contract and its material implication on the company is not immediately known.
When contacted, Reliance officials declined to comment on the issue. But sources close to the company confirmed the development and said that the contract with Aban Offshore was terminated owing to ‘commercial reasons’.
Aban was on an acquisition spree of lates and the company had hit the headlines recently by buying a majority stake in the Norvegian company Sinvest for a consideration of $446 million (over Rs 2,000 crore). As of the quarter ended December last, Aban has a turnover of Rs 126.14 crore and clocked a net profit of Rs 20.78 crore.http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=157649
World Bank, IMF Forgive Most of Sao Tome and Principe Debt
By Naomi Schwarz
Dakar
16 March 2007
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have announced they will forgive more than 90 percent of Sao Tome and Principe's public debt. A small twin-island state with fewer than 200,000 inhabitants, aid-dependent Sao Tome and Principe has high hopes for offshore oil development. Naomi Schwarz has more on the story from VOA's regional bureau in Dakar.
The government of Sao Tome and Principe is celebrating the news that much of their international debt, staggeringly high considering the twin-island nation's tiny economy, will be forgiven.
Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Gustavo Dos Anjos said it was with great joy that the government received the news late Thursday, during budgetary meetings at Parliament. He said it is something the country has waited a long time for.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have agreed to forgive hundreds of millions of dollars of debt under their
Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative.
Foreign Minister Gustavo says Sao Tomé will continue negotiations with lending countries to forgive the remaining debt. He says the remaining loans are with countries that are not part of the World Bank initiative. He says Sao Tomé is trying to negotiate debt-forgiveness deals directly with these countries.
Sao Tomé's main export, cocoa, brings in about five million dollars. They receive more than $25 million a year in foreign aid, and have one of the world's highest debts per person. They have also received tens of millions of dollars in signature bonuses for the rights to explore in joint Nigieran and Sao Tomé waters.
Foreign Minister Gustavo says debt relief will help Sao Tome focus their resources on development. He says it allows Sao Tome and Principe to invest in other sectors, such as education, health, and other social programs.
The oil money has created a bit of a false economic boom, says analyst Nicholas Shaxson.
"Some of the oil money has been coming already, and this has been coming into the government's budget," he said "But a lot of the money seems to have been spent already. A little bit of it has been saved, but it is not going to go a very long way. And no discoveries have been made yet. So it is quite an uncertain position in terms of the future."
Shaxson says debt relief is largely symbolic for Sao Tome.
"There is no obvious way that the government is able to repay that [their debt] other than through further foreign aid and maybe the discovery of oil," he said. "And so in some sense it has been a little bit of an academic exercise because if the government cannot repay its very large debts than it will not repay and debt relief in practical terms will not necessarily make a huge difference."
But he says it will change the terms of foreign aid in the future.
The most recent investors to begin preparations for exploration are Chinese oil company Sidopec and Switzerland's Addax. The two companies are to begin offshore drilling next year using a specially adapted ship made by an Indian company.
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Of course it is. EOM
CHINA BIDS FOR AFRICAN OIL
Friday, March 16, 2007 - FreeMarketNews.com
CITIC (China International Trust and Investment Company, a Chinese state-owned investment conglomerate is currently negotiating deals to acquire African oil resources to secure supplies for the country, according to the Australian and Forbes.
The terms of the deal aren't complete, but they the deal is expected to be large. It is preparing to issue up to $1 billion in corporate bonds in order to finance purchases. Over recent years, CITIC has been aggressively bidding for natural resource assets including oil, natural gas, coal, lumber, aluminum, and iron. In January, it acquired Kazakhstan oil reserves from Canada's Nations Energy Corp for $1.91 billion.
China has been criticized for its investments in Africa. Some officials in the US and elsewhere are accusing China of plundering and profiteering from Africa. However, Chinese officials have pointed out China is bidding for a small fraction of the resources from Africa that the rest of the world consumes. Africa exports 36 percent of its oil to Europe, 33 percent to the US, and only 8.7 percent to China.
Sinopec to buy filling stations in Hong Kong
By Wang Yu (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-03-16 08:40
China's top refiner Sinopec plans to acquire filling stations and petroleum assets in Hong Kong to become a first-tier oil retailer there.
"The entities we are to purchase from China Resources Enterprise will put us among the top four oil retailers in Hong Kong in terms of filling stations. With more stations and support from our mainland refineries, we are capable of competing head-to-head with international energy giants in a transparent market environment," Sinopec spokesman Huang Wensheng told China Daily yesterday.
Sinopec has entered into a framework agreement with China Resources to acquire 20 oil and gas stations and other assets from the latter with a preliminary offer of HK$4 billion.
The final agreement is expected to be signed sometime next month, Huang hinted.
"We'll do the due diligence and double-check the value of those entities. We believe the deal is worth it," Huang said.
Sinopec now owns 13 filling stations in Hong Kong. With the 20 new ones, not only can Asia's largest refiner leverage into big-league oil retailing in Hong Kong, it can also make better use of these assets, Huang said.
"Our refineries near Hong Kong in Hainan and Guangdong provinces can provide stable and solid supply for these terminals at low cost."
Moreover, the deals will help Sinopec gain market experience and raise its brand awareness.
"It's a golden chance to improve our corporate image by competing with global giants such as Exxon Mobil, Shell and Chevon in a fully market-oriented environment like Hong Kong," Huang said.
If any major liabilities are found in course of the due diligence, the parties will have the right to adjust the terms of the final agreement.
"The sides are expected to sign the final agreement in mid-April, with an intention to complete the proposed transaction by June 30 this year," China Resources Enterprise said.
The execution of the framework agreement represents another major step in China Resources Enterprise's ongoing efforts to divest its non-core assets to focus on core consumer businesses.
"The disposal is a milestone in our progressive transformation into a pure consumer company," said Song Lin, chairman of China Resources.
Citic chases oil and gas deposits at home and abroad
Andrew Yeh, Beijing
March 16, 2007
CITIC Group, Beijing's investment vehicle, is adopting an aggressive acquisition strategy to secure oil and gas deposits to supply China's energy needs.
The conglomerate was in talks to buy oil assets in China and Africa, a person familiar with Citic's plans said.
The locations have not been made public but African countries such as Angola, Sudan and Nigeria have become important oil suppliers to China.
The acquisitions will be proof of Citic's emergence as an important energy buyer for Beijing, which up to now has relied on China National Petroleum Corporation, Sinopec and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).
Citic completed the $US1.9 billion ($2.4 billion) purchase of Kazakhstan oil assets from Nations Energy in January.
Beijing has offered support for such transactions, often bankrolled by China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of China.
"If it's needed, they'll fund it - it's a government-supported transaction," the source said. He said Citic was preparing to offer $US1 billion in corporate bonds to shore up its capital base. The planned purchases are likely to go more smoothly than the one in Kazakhstan, where some authorities feel Chinese companies are becoming too dominant.
After buying the rights to that oilfield, which has estimated output of 50,000 barrels a day, Citic last month resold 50 per cent to state-owned Kaz Munaigas.
Citic is now expected to integrate the remaining half of its Kazakh oil assets into Citic Resources Holdings, its Hong Kong-listed subsidiary.
It is understood the company is also considering joint operation of a refinery in Kazakhstan.
Citic Resources has in the past focused mainly on timber, aluminium, coal, iron ore and other commodities.
However, it is also developing an oil project in Indonesia and has become more active in oil and gas. The company was founded by Rong Yiren, the late "Red Capitalist", whose son Larry Yung is a group executive.
Last November, Mr Yung, one of China's richest men, bought a $US800 million stake in Anglo American, the London-listed resources giant.
China's search for oil and gas has been focused on central Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa.
11th African Oil and Gas, Trade and Finance Conference & Exhibition 23-25 May 2007, Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Nairobi, Kenya
NAIROBI, Kenya, March 15 /PRNewswire/ --
- Held Under the High Patronage of the Honourable Kiraitu Murungi, MP, Minister for Energy
- Kenya Prepares to Host the Next Key UNCTAD African Oil Summit
With attention on East Africa's oil and gas potential increasing, Kenya provides the perfect location for the 11th annual meeting of the African Oil and Gas, Trade and Finance Conference & Exhibition which will focus on the 'Interface between Hydrocarbons and Finance', and will provide a platform for Kenya to demonstrate the opportunities it can offer to exploration companies.
Kenya is viewed as having attractive untapped exploration potential, and provides low cost entry requirements and incentives for companies with an interest in exploring oil and gas. This region provides a large area of untapped exploration potential, although despite previous exploration it has not yet as produced a mature oil and gas field, but this is set to change.
Since its inception in 1996, the conference has continued to increase in size and status to establish itself as the highlight of the African oil and gas event calendar. It brings together an impressive assembly of prominent Ministers and senior level executives from the oil and gas and finance sectors and has become the focal point for all those concerned with the significant opportunities and developments within the African energy sector.
Technical seminar sessions will provide the opportunity for information exchange and networking, together with various social events and an extensive exhibition which will be held alongside the main conference.
To date this event has been hosted across the African continent in Algeria, Mozambique, Morocco, Angola, Cameron, Ghana, Namibia, Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe with increasing success. This well respected event is consistently attended by Government ministers and senior level executives from the oil and gas and finance sectors.
Increase your profile through sponsorship and exhibition opportunities
A variety of sponsorship packages have been created to add value to your participation and to enhance your company's image and brand awareness. Exhibiting at this exceptional networking event will enable your company to meet with the major stakeholders and decision makers involved in Africa's energy sector. For further information contact Baytir.Samba@ite-exhibitions.com.
CONTACTS
For further information on participation and sponsorship opportunities,
please contact
ITE Group plc
Baytir Samba/Sarah Ashmore
Tel: +44-207-596-5092/5053
Email: African@ite-exhibitions.com
Or visit www.africa-ogtf.com.
Distributed by PR Newswire on behalf of ITE Group Plc
Nigeria posts 5.63 percent GDP growth in 2006: report
Nigeria achieved a 5.63 percent GDP growth in 2006, compared to the 6.23 percent recorded in 2005 and 1.19 percent at the inception of current administration in 1999, according to statistics released by the National Planning Commission (NPC) Thursday.
The statistics showed that an 8.93 percent growth was recorded in the non-oil sector in 2006, as against 8.21 percent achieved in 2005. This represented a substantial growth from the 4.37 percent recorded in the sector in 1999, said the NPC.
It said that the country's external reserves stood at about 42 billion U.S. dollars by the end of last year against the 28.6 billion dollars recorded by the end of 2005 and the 7.7 billion dollars recorded in 1999.
The Nigerian government intends to achieve a 10 percent GDP growth rate over the next 10 years to record sustainable economic development in the country, according to its National Economic and Empowerment Strategy document.
Source: Xinhua
Eliabby - nice call, it did. EOM.
Oily, so Addax and Sinopec just had this formal ceremony in Sao Tome to announce they had a rig and were going to be drilling in 08.
So you're saying that on the side, Sinopec is already active in the JDZ........ no ceremony, no nothing - they are drilling?
ND9
China in talks to buy oil assets in Africa,
AFX News Limited
China's Citic Group in talks to buy oil assets in China, Africa - report
03.14.07, 9:09 PM ET
BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - State-owned investment firm Citic Group is in talks to buy a sizeable oil asset in China in the coming months, followed by another in Africa, the Financial Times reported, citing a source familiar with Citic's plans.
The source said the government has offered financial support for the transactions, possibly through China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of China.
'If it's needed, they'll fund it ... it's a government-supported transaction,' he said, adding that Citic is preparing to offer 1 bln usd in corporate bonds to shore up its capital base.
In December last year, Citic Group announced that it has acquired the Kazakhstan oil assets of Canada's Nations Energy Co for 1.91 bln usd.
virginie.mangin@xinhuafinance.com
Anadarko still selling more assets..............
March 13, 2007, 12:45AM
Anadarko says it's selling part of its K2 stake
Field in Gulf draws interest of undisclosed buyers
By DAN LONKEVICH
Bloomberg News
Anadarko Petroleum Corp. agreed to sell part of its stake in the K2 oil and natural gas field in the Gulf of Mexico to two undisclosed buyers for $1.2 billion.
The sale, which is expected to close in the second quarter, would reduce Anadarko's stake in the project to 41.8 percent from 65 percent, according to a statement Monday from The Woodlands-based company.
Anadarko plans to use new water and gas injection techniques to tap reserves from the field, said Carin Dehne Kiley, an analyst at Calyon Securities USA in New York. Poorer-than- expected results from existing processes at the field led the company to lower its estimate for 2006 reserves by the equivalent of 136 million barrels of oil, she said.
"It's nice that somebody else agrees with them that the new strategy will work," said Kiley, who rates Anadarko shares a "buy" and owns none.
Chief Executive Officer Jim Hackett is selling assets to reduce debt from the acquisitions in August of Kerr-McGee Corp. and Western Gas Resources for a combined $21 billion. The company has sold or announced the sale of more than $11 billion of oil and gas fields. Hackett has said he will sell $15 billion of assets.
Anadarko on Feb. 6 said its overall reserves rose 23 percent last year to the equivalent of 3 billion barrels of oil. Production from the six wells in the K2 field averaged the equivalent of 37,100 barrels of oil a day so far this year, Anadarko said Monday. The company will continue to operate the field.
Analysis: India's energy hunt guidelines
By KUSHAL JEENA
UPI Energy Correspondent
NEW DELHI, March 14 (UPI) -- Aimed at discouraging state-run energy companies from bidding for the same blocks, India is contemplating guidelines to have designated companies acquire overseas oil and gas assets.
Indian oil and gas companies have been competing with each other to acquire the same energy blocks overseas, leading to a rise in the price of the bloc and to India losing many assets to its Chinese counterparts. Indian companies, however, argue their bids foster healthy competition.
"Unlike China, we do not have any such policy under which designated companies are allowed to bid for a particular asset," said Jayanta Roychowdhurty, an energy analyst. "We have left the field open for all the government-controlled companies. This practice needs to be stopped through guidelines to be put in place for upstream and downstream oil and gas business."
He said India's oil sector appeared directionless, particularly on the issue of acquisition of oil and gas assets abroad, as there were gaps in the country's new oil policy, which was put in place in 1995.
"There is no policy as such to guide the upstream and downstream oil companies on buying assets in a foreign country," he said.
In 1995, India announced its policy for the acquisition of oil and gas assets overseas in order to minimize the fast-rising oil-import bills. At the time, domestic production of crude oil remained stagnant at around 33 million tons annually while demand had risen to 108 million tons.
In order to bridge the supply-demand gap, the United Progressive Alliance-led government constituted an expert committee in 2005 headed by N Krishnamurthy, a member of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's National Advisory Council.
In a recent report to the government, the expert committee recommended the government fix slabs for investments by government-controlled oil companies that are bidding to buy overseas assets.
The committee also suggested that the government set up a mechanism to coordinate the cash-rich oil companies because each company draws its overseas strategy in line with its interests. Consequently, they frequently come across each other during the bidding process. The state-run Chinese National Oil Co. has on many occasions taken advantage of this anomaly in India's oil policy.
"The government should ask the oil companies to stick to their core business instead of asking them to diversify their field of activities," said an unidentified official of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry, which controls the government-owned oil and gas companies.
According to the ministry's data, India's dependence on oil imports is set to increase. It imports around 78 percent of its crude needs. In 2006, it imported 99.4 million tons, 6.1 percent more than the 2004-05 figure of 95.9 million tons. Imports are expected to reach 86.3 percent in the next five years.
In this scenario, the acquisition of overseas assets is badly required. In the absence of a cohesive policy, however, oil companies are fighting with each other and losing bids.
For instance, ONGC Videsh Ltd., the overseas arm of state-controlled Oil and Natural Gas Crop., decided to bid for blocks in Russia's Sakhalin-III. State-owned Oil India Ltd. has also shown interest in the same field. This in-house competition is expected to be repeated in Nigeria and Egypt where Hindustan Petroleum Corp. and OIL both have decided to bid. Similarly in Nigeria, IOC has shown interest in bidding for a refinery where the HPCL-Mittal joint venture has expressed interest.
Meanwhile, the government has vowed to achieve energy security by eliminating oil imports.
"If the economy grows by 10 percent, there will be corresponding growth in energy demand. But our energy situation does not look good," said Pranab Mukherjee, India's foreign minister, while addressing a business gathering at Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industries. "We are now importing 70 percent of our crude oil requirements at a high cost. We need to intensify our efforts to make use of nonconventional energy resources."
"Our companies should go out and acquire oil and gas assets abroad. They should also acquire mines, forests and agricultural land in Latin America," Mukherjee said.
Indian oil officials say that by 2025, with the demand for oil projected to touch 370 million tons, India should produce at least 110 million tons yearly of crude.
"Hence to maintain this level, we need to add 60 million tons of oil every year. We thought the only way to get this was to get it from outside India as equity oil. Our mission, therefore, is to get this 60 million tons every year by 2025," said Atul Chandra, a senior energy analyst and former managing director of OVL.
--
JDA signs oil drilling pact with foreign firm
• Wednesday, Mar 14, 2007
The Nigeria Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Authority (JDA), Addax petroleum and sinopec of China have signed an agreement on the “Aban Abraham’ I deep water drill ship.
The agreement was aimed at drilling 10 wells on blocks two, three and four in the Joint Development Zone (JDZ) between Nigeria and Sao Tome and Principe in the Gulf of Guinea.
Jeff schrull, General Manager, Addax petroleum signed on behalf of his company while Messrs Lian Mingxiang and Ado Wanka endorsed the agreement on behalf of sinopec and JDA respectively.
The agreement was signed on Sunday in Sao Tome and the drilling which is expected to start in August next year will end in December same year at the rate of $410,000 per day.
“I am delighted that we have secured drilling capability of our project on competitive terms from Aban Abraham,” our correspondent in Sao Tome quoted schrull as saying.
According to him, Addax and its co-ventures were fortunate to find Aban Abraham drillers, given the rising cost of drilling.
“The contract will enable us to complete an extensive exploration and appraisal programme which has the potential to realise considerable value for Addax, its shareholders’ and other stakeholders in terms of crude exploitation, Schrull said.
He said that his company and their partners were committed to minimum work programme before the discovery of the first oil.
Speaking at the occasion, JDA Chairman Ado Wanka, said the initiative would go a long way to facilitate the exploration and exploitation of crude in the JDZ.
He described the event as a “huge success” which signified that stakeholders were eager to get the first oil on record time.
Commenting, Sinopec’s representative, Lian Mingxiang said the company was opportune to be part of the venture.
“We will do everything humanly possible to ensure the success of the project while bringing our varied expertise to bear on the projects”, Mingxiang said.
Addax petroleum is the operator of block four, Sinopec operates blocks two and three and JDA is the concessionaire.
Aban Abraham is a deep-water drill ship built in 1976 as a world-class second generation drill ship, which is currently being upgraded from second generation to fourth generation capability.
JDA was established in 2001 to manage hydrocarbon and non-hydrocarbon resources on 60\40 in favour of Nigeria in the JDZ and had since 2003 been awarded six oil blocks out of the nine blocks identified.
Addax Petroleum Added to the S&P/TSX Composite Index
Addax Petroleum Corporation (TSX: AXC) ("Addax Petroleum" or the "Corporation") is pleased to announce that Standard & Poor's Canadian Index Operation is adding Addax Petroleum to the S&P / TSX Composite Index and the S&P / TSX Capped Energy Index. The addition will be effective at the open of the TSX on Monday, March 19, 2007.
Nigeria: The Asian Dance On Our Rigs
This Day (Lagos)
OPINION
March 12, 2007
Posted to the web March 13, 2007
Albertus Mekwonye
Lagos
The Nigerian oil industry, or should we say the Nigerian Government is set to see a significant shift to Asian players. The oil industry view is that western companies are now too "comfortable" taking without any benefits to the government and indeed the local communities in which they carry out their exploration activities in Nigeria.
An article in Upstream recently published referred to Dr. Edmund Daukoro, the Energy Minister as saying we are very anxious to do deal with the Koreans by the end of March . What is this deal? The article refer red to first refusal rights and preferential concessions to KNOC, The Korean National Corporation and CNOOC for a loan of about $2.5 billion in return for an investment package financed by this loan.
One of the many things that is meant to be done with this loan is for the Koreans to construct a 200 kilometre gas pipe line running from the Niger Delta to Abuja and to fund a fertilizer plant and a power station with capacity of 2250 mega watts. The assets that are being pledged, although still in the ground technically, are worth more than 5 times these loans.
Caution my friends on this type of tango! The floor may be very slippery. So I would say to the Energy Minister that there should be no anxiety in closing this deal. Caution should be the word.
A Spanish E&P company seeking to do business in Nigeria, we gather through an insider source, after protracted negotiations, was recently given some exceptional and favourable conditions. But guess what?
They want more! The typical Oliver Twist scenario. In characteristic fashion they have beefed up their projected oil exploration costs to such an astronomical figure that the Nigerian government as usual might be left with nothing or very little. This attitude seems to be the norm of most of our western players in this industry from Iran in the thirties to Nigeria in the 21st century. The national asset belongs to the exploration companies intertwined with their governments rather than the owners of the assets whose lands and people are exploited and destroyed.
Lord Browne, Chief Executive of BP plc in his keynote speech during International Petroleum Week (15th February 2006), advised that geologists should intensify their search for hydrocarbons in new areas as consumers will be dependent on supplies from just 3 areas ¨ West Africa, Russia and most importantly the 5 states around the Persian Gulf led by Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia¡±. His reasoning for this statement is most informative and in our view reflects the conservative thinking of our western friends.
The resources on which we are going to rely are close to investments by any private company. The decision on investment and production are controlled by Governments who have their own interests to pursue, which may not always be aligned with the interests or international consumers. We beg to ask the question: should Governments not pursue the interests of their nations? Why should the international consumers, interest; i.e. our western friends always take precedence? Open market and fair trade we think is what they call it only if it applies to them.
The present under current of nationalism and nationalist elements in the oil industry and the local communities in which they operate reflects this insensitivity of what has been disguised in the terminology of open market.
The Shell Bonga Development should be a good case study in contracts and concessions as the Nigerian Government is unlikely to realise any meaningful revenue if at all in most of its productive life. Thus the Government's shift to the Asian companies might give us a way of correcting some of the lopsided contracts and indeed have companies that are willing to give a little to the country. Russia has recently negotiated some of its gas concessions with BP and Venezuela and Bolivia are also demanding better conditions and a more reasonable share of the profits.
The Nigerian Government can check these excesses that have characterised our western friends in the oil exploration industry by developing a strong monitoring and control system and in formidable national oil producing company. Patriotism and nationalism should now be the central focus of any elected Government in Nigeria but with the knowledge that mutual profitability allows for sustainable growth.
The story and history of the Iranian Oil Company should be a reference as to why we need a viable indigenous industry to exploit our assets for our people ¨C in the true sense rather than paper policy.
The new talk on anti-capitalism or "vulture capitalism" is driven by the corporate insensitivities that are found in most oil companies.
A new order for sustainable and long term growth not stifled with community unrest should be examined and put in place.
There was a recent concern by the British public of the excessive profits of their banks and the super market chain Tesco and private equity fund managers that are now being watched. It is worth noting that Barclays Bank announced their astronomical annual profits the British public protested against their excessive bank charges. Barclays was quick to say that 50% - yes 50% of their profits came from overseas operations; i.e. "don't you worry we milked the foreigners more than the British public? Rip them off abroad and you are doing right does that ring a bell?
What will they say about the poor totally impoverished people of the oil producing states in Nigeria? It is alright if the profits are driving the foreign economy or the international consumers as Lord Browne of BP put it. What are we doing to ensure that our economy is driven by some of these profits.
Relevant Links
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The oil insider who gave us the scenario of the Spanish company trying to break into Nigeria and West Africa was shocked their attitude towards investing in Nigeria is still driven by the "vulture capitalis approach. That our friends still believe that enslaving the ¡°African natives is theirs by right and yet their own communities are frowning on excessive profiteering in their domestic markets should leave us with an unquestionable sense of duty to our people.
Let us hope that we look closely at the new terms and contracts and welcome our new Asian friends with a slight reminder that the people and Government of Nigeria come first. We are not aversed to taking the consumers along with us.
- Mekwonye wrote from Bonny Island, Rivers State
Chevron sees big profits in Asia
CEO O'Reilly says the oil giant will take advantage of surging demand in China; predicts the enactment U.S. greenhouse gas laws.
By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer
March 13 2007: 4:40 PM EDT
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- China's growing appetite for oil will be a challenge for U.S. consumers already facing rising gas prices, but an opportunity for Chevron, CEO David O'Reilly said Tuesday at an analyst conference in New York.
In a wide-ranging speech, O'Reilly said that U.S. greenhouse gas regulations "undoubtedly" will arise, warned about the risk of nationalization and its impact on future investments in Venezuela, while he reassured investors that Chevron is not dependent on politically risky areas like Russia or the Middle East for growing its oil reserves.
Special Reportfull coverage
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The case for $3 gas
OPEC expected to hold line on production
Energy wrap
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Buyers of TXU agree to scrap 8 coal plants - a sign of the growing influence of environmental groups on business. (more)
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With crude prices high and money still cheap, the industry could see more deals than ever. Who might be bought? (more)
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O'Reilly said California-based Chevron (Charts), the country's second-largest oil company whose Asian operations include Australia, Thailand, and Indonesia, is well-positioned to take advantage of China's growing energy use.
Go Green. Get Rich.
Claiming that Chevron has the largest presence in the region of any competitor, O'Reilly said "we are distinctly advantaged for this reason."
"It is clear that the Asia Pacific region will be the dominant economic force 25 years from now," he said.
When asked what this meant for U.S. consumers, he said "really, this is a global market," implying rising demand in one country affects prices worldwide.
Like many major U.S. companies, O'Reilly expects new laws aimed at limiting emissions of carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas.
"There is undoubtedly going to be some type of greenhouse gas controls in the U.S.," he said. He added that he doesn't expect any new legislation until 2010 at the earliest.
O'Reilly also echoed other companies in saying Chevron would prefer federal oversight of greenhouse gas emissions over a patchwork of state laws.
California and several Northeastern states have moved to limit carbon emissions in response to what they see as a lack of action from the federal government.
But the prospect of carbon restrictions - which could come in either the form of a cap on emissions or an outright tax -didn't seem to bother O'Reilly.
"It's premature to say what the impacts will be," he said. "But it will clearly favor oil, gas and nuclear over the coal business."
He also said Chevron had no trouble operating in areas that already have carbon restrictions in place, like the European Union.
On the prospect of increasing the company's oil reserves - a central question when investors evaluate the viability of an oil's firm's stock - O'Reilly said Chevron's extensive operations in the Gulf of Mexico and Australia mean it will not have to boost production significantly in politically unstable places like the Middle East or Russia.
He said Chevron should be able to increase its production by over 1 million barrels of oil and gas per day by 2011 without having to rely more on troubled regions for that growth.
An addition of over 1 million barrels per day would result in average annual production growth of at least 3 percent, he said.
Several analysts have questioned the ability of Western oil companies to keep up with rising oil demand if they are locked out of the oil-rich Middle East or strong-armed into less favorable deals in places like Russia or Venezuela.
O'Reilly said Chevron's continued involvement in Venezuela will depend on the outcome of current contract renegotiations.
Chevron and ConocoPhillips (Charts) currently own 60 percent of a 190,000 barrel per day Venezuelan oil operation.
The Venezuelan government - led by its left-leaning president Hugo Chavez -controls the remaining 40 percent of the project, but is moving to take a 51 percent stake.
"How we're treated in that negotiation will very much impact our appetite going forward," O'Reilly said. Last week Reuters reported that Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, will hand over control of a multi-billion dollar project to the Venezuelan state by May 1.
Chevron is the world's fourth-largest publicly traded oil company by revenue, behind Exxon Mobil (Charts), Royal Dutch Shell (Charts), and BP (Charts).
Chevron made a net profit of $15 billion in 2006 on revenue of $195 billion.
Several state owned oil companies, like Saudi Arabia's Aramco, dwarf the publicly traded firms.
________________
Chevron Sees Costs for 6 Projects Rising $7.5 Billion (Update5)
By Joe Carroll
March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Chevron Corp., the second-largest U.S. oil company, expects to spend $7.5 billion more than planned on projects slated to begin in the next four years after rents for drilling rigs surged to a record.
The increase marks a 34 percent jump in costs for six projects, to $29.7 billion. Chevron threw out estimates for 11 other projects, previously tabbed at $45.9 billion, because it can't yet determine if they'll still be viable, Chief Executive Officer David O'Reilly told analysts today in New York.
Chevron, based in San Ramon, California, expects its average rig rent to jump 25 percent this year to $250,000 a day. Rates for the most prized offshore rigs have skyrocketed in the past two years as producers compete for the few units available.
``They're in a hurry to get things done,'' said James Halloran, who helps manage $35 billion, including 3.7 million Chevron shares, at National City Private Client Group in Cleveland. ``With that in mind, they're having to pay market rates. There's a credibility issue with completion of these projects.''
Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest oil company, last week said it sees capital spending rising to almost $21 billion this year, partly on increasing costs. Chevron in February said it plans to lift capital spending by 18 percent this year.
Drilling Plans
About 75 percent of Chevron's $19.6 billion capital budget will go to finding and developing new oil and natural-gas reserves, O'Reilly said at a meeting with analysts. The company is investing at least $1 billion in each of 30 projects to help meet a goal of increasing output by 3 percent or more annually through 2010.
The Gorgon offshore gas field in Australia, the company's most expensive project, ``is undergoing intense evaluation'' to see if the profit outlook can be improved in the face of soaring costs, O'Reilly said. Chevron has halted engineering work on Canada's Hebron field because it grew too costly, he said.
``We're not going to do projects that don't make economic sense,'' O'Reilly, 60, told analysts.
Shares of Chevron fell 99 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $67.84 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The stock has dropped 7.7 percent this year.
Chevron drilled 42 successful exploration wells last year, said Bobby Ryan, vice president for exploration. Its success rate in the past five years is 45 percent.
Projects Threatened
Chevron plans to drill exploration wells this year in the Gulf of Mexico, eastern Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, the Gulf of Thailand and off the coast of West Africa, Ryan said at the meeting with analysts.
The spending increases Chevron cited are in Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Angola. The 11 projects that may be put in jeopardy by increasing costs may pump the equivalent of 1.83 million barrels of oil a day, matching the entire output of Iraq, should they all go forward.
``We can see capital expenditures growing, we can see the pipeline of future projects growing, but what's not growing are future production expectations,'' Mark Flannery, an analyst at Credit Suisse Holdings USA Inc. in New York, said during a question-and-answer session with Chevron executives.
Chevron expects its 2008 budget for exploration, refineries and chemical plants to be unchanged from this year's estimated $19.6 billion, O'Reilly said. He reiterated the company's forecast for average annual output growth of 3 percent or more.
Outlook in Venezuela
O'Reilly said decisions on whether to invest in new oil and gas projects in Venezuela will hinge on how the company fares in ongoing talks to surrender part of its stake in the Hamaca oil project to state-controlled Petroleos de Venezuela SA.
``Our appetite will depend very much on how we are treated in the current process,'' O'Reilly said today.
A gas-injection project at Kazakhstan's Tengiz, the third- largest oil field outside the Middle East, will help more than triple the field's output to 1 million barrels of crude a day by 2012, said George Kirkland, executive vice president for exploration and production. Chevron has a 50 percent stake in Tengiz.
Production from the $2.8 billion offshore Frade field in Brazil won't begin until 2009, a year later than planned previously, Chevron said. The Bibiyana gas project in Bangladesh will start production by the end of June after missing a 2006 start-up target, the company said.
Chevron is expanding its capacity to process low-cost, high-sulfur crudes with projects in such places as South Korea, the U.K. and California, Mike Wirth, the company's refining chief, said at the analyst meeting.
To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Carroll in Houston at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: March 13, 2007 16:16 EDT
Aban Abraham refurbishment complete mid 2007 - Once commissioned, the Aban Abraham will undertake drilling operations for a third party operator before starting drilling
operations for Addax Petroleum........ hmmmmmm
ND9
Oil cos to invest $74 mln in Sao Tome/Nigeria zone
Monday March 12, 8:15 PM
SAO TOME, March 12 (Reuters) - China's Sinopec Corp and
Canada's Addax Petroleum Corp will spend $73.8 million on prospecting in two blocks of a Joint Development Zone of Sao Tome and Nigeria, a spokesman said.
Jeff Schrull, a spokesman for the exploration venture, was speaking in Sao Tome at the weekend at a ceremony to sign a contract with with Indian deepwater specialist services group Aban Offshore Limited .
Addax said last week it had agreed with Aban to start drilling operations as early as the second quarter of 2008.
Aban said separately the contract was worth $123 million.
Sinopec heads a consortium that paid a $71 million signature bonus last March for a production sharing agreement for block 2 in the Joint Development Zone. Addax holds a stake in block 4.
The Joint Development Zone was created under a deal to end a long-running dispute between Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and top oil producer, and the tiny Atlantic archipelago of Sao Tome and Principe, which currently produces no oil.
Nigeria owns a 60 percent stake in the zone with 40 percent belonging to Sao Tome, most of whose 170,000 people live on less than $1 a day and hope crude oil could drag them out poverty.
U.S. major Chevron Corp. raised hopes last May when it announced it had found oil and gas in block of the Joint Development Zone, but it is still too early to say whether the reserves are commercially viable.
Under the treaty governing the zone, even if viable reserves are found, Nigeria and Sao Tome only start to benefit after the firms involved have recouped their research costs, which could run into billions of dollars.
The new Seven Sisters
Financial Times FT.comSearch FT.comSunday Mar 11 2007
By Carola Hoyos
The new Seven Sisters The old ’Seven Sisters’ were the western companies that once dominated the world’s energy industries. The FT’s new seven are mainly state-owned companies from the emerging world.
When an angry Enrico Mattei coined the phrase “the seven sisters” to describe the Anglo-Saxon companies that controlled the Middle East’s oil after the second world war, the founder of Italy’s modern energy industry could not have imagined the profound shift in power that would occur barely half a century later.
As oil prices have trebled over the past four years, a new group of oil and gas companies has risen to prominence. They have consolidated their power as aggressive resource holders and seekers and pushed the world’s biggest listed energy groups, which emerged out of the original seven sisters – ExxonMobil and Chevron of the US and Europe’s BP and Royal Dutch Shell – on to the sidelines and into an existential crisis.
The “new seven sisters”, or the most influential energy companies from countries outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, have been identified by the Financial Times in consultation with numerous industry executives. They are Saudi Aramco, Russia’s Gazprom, CNPC of China, NIOC of Iran, Venezuela’s PDVSA, Brazil’s Petrobras and Petronas of Malaysia.
Overwhelmingly state-owned, they control almost one-third of the world’s oil and gas production and more than one-third of its total oil and gas reserves. In contrast, the old seven sisters – which shrank to four in the industry consolidation of the 1990s – produce about 10 per cent of the world’s oil and gas and hold just 3 per cent of reserves. Even so, their integrated status – which means they sell not only oil and gas, but also gasoline, diesel and petrochemicals – push their revenues notably higher than those of the newcomers.
Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy, an industry consultancy, says: “The reason the original seven sisters were so important was that they were the rule makers; they controlled the industry and the markets. Now, these new seven sisters are the rule makers and the international oil companies are the rule takers.”
The International Energy Agency, the developed world’s sectoral watchdog, calculates that 90 per cent of new supplies will come from developing countries in the next 40 years. That marks a big shift from the past 30 years, when 40 per cent of new production came from industrialised nations, most of it controlled by listed western energy groups, noted a report published last week by Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute of Public Policy.
The biggest contributor will be Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest and most sophisticated national oil company and thus number one on the FT list. After the surge in crude prices since 2002, Saudi Aramco launched its most ambitious expansion programme in a generation. It aims to boost production capacity from 11m barrels a day – or 13 per cent of today’s global consumption – to 12.5m b/d and then 15m b/d.
In doing so, Saudi Aramco will consolidate its position as the world’s most powerful oil company, allowing Riyadh to remain the world’s central banker of oil – turning taps on when there is a shortage of global supply, and off when prices are falling below its comfort level.
International oil companies and the leaders of the main consuming nations have come to accept Saudi Aramco’s dominance. But the recent shift in the international influence of smaller national oil companies has been harder to swallow. By the end of last year, companies such as BP and Shell had lost their leading positions on the world’s stock exchanges: Russia’s Gazprom and PetroChina (88 per cent owned by CNPC) had pushed their way into second and third place among the biggest listed energy groups.
ExxonMobil, perhaps the only energy company from the developed world that can match the new batch in overall influence, now remains alone at the top. Gazprom, Petrobras of Brazil and PetroChina have also outshone the others in share price gains.
The main reason for this shift in power has been a resurfacing of the resource nationalism that began in Mexico in the 1930s, spread to the Middle East in the 1970s and abated – and in some cases went into reverse – when oil prices cooled in the late 1980s and 1990s. Groups including Mattei’s Eni are having to accept new contract terms in countries such as Russia and Venezuela, where national energy companies are systematically clawing back control of fields.
Venezuela this month enacted a law that will give PDVSA majority control of the Orinoco belt’s heavy oil fields, the largest such resource in the world. In Russia the Kremlin wrested control of Shell’s $20bn (£10bn, €15bn) natural gas project on Sakhalin Island at the end of last year and announced Gazprom would lead the development of the vast Arctic Shtokman gas field, relegating international oil companies to service providers.
This month Lord Browne, BP’s chief executive, travelled to Moscow to try to head off becoming the latest Gazprom victim. He proposed that BP marketed the Russian company’s future liquefied natural gas abroad in an effort to stave off Gazprom’s ambitions to take control of the Kovykta gas field, one of BP’s key Russian assets.
The impact of today’s nationalism is different from that of the 1970s. In 1975 Gulf, one of the original seven sisters and now part of Chevron and BP, shifted all its movable investment dollars out of the developing world and back to North America and the North Sea. This time international oil companies are finding no new fields to escape to. In fact, they have discovered nowhere capable of pumping more than 1m b/d since 2000, when Kazakhstan’s Kashagan field became the biggest find in 30 years.
Meanwhile, national oil companies are banding together to help to develop each other’s reserves, leaving growth in the oil and gas industry – and the resources for world economic development – in the hands of the new seven sisters and the governments that control them. The consequences of this could hardly be more profound. Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA, estimates that the world is falling 20 per cent short of making the $20,000bn investment needed to ensure adequate energy supplies for the next 25 years.
Governments’ unwillingness to allow their national oil companies to reinvest their recent windfall profits back into the industry lies at the root of many of the worries about future supplies. Instead, those governments use the money for social ventures or it is wasted.
President Hugo Chávez, of Venezuela, spends two-thirds of PDVSA’s budget on his populist social programmes, with almost $7bn being funnelled in that direction by 2005, compared with the $77m spent in 1997 by the previous government, the Rice Univeristy report found. Meanwhile, in Russia too little of Gazprom’s earnings goes towards upgrading Russia’s antiquated, leaking pipeline system, 30 per cent of which needs replacing, the IEA warns. In Iran, NIOC is still a gas importer despite controlling South Pars, the world’s biggest gas field. It is hindered from boosting its oil production or fixing its refineries because of the burden of financing subsidies that keep petrol prices at just 10 US cents a litre.
But the poster child of what happens when a government restricts foreign investment while using its national oil company as a bottomless piggybank is Mexico. Pemex’s decline has excluded it from the FT list of the developing world’s most influential energy companies.
The most pessimistic forecasters say the rapid ageing of Mexico’s giant Cantarell field will turn America’s third largest oil supplier into a net importer within a decade.
“The x-factor is [Mexico’s] Congress, with Pemex constantly locked in a battle to secure sufficient funding and a reasonable fiscal regime, the company cannot plan on a long-term horizon with great certainty, handicapping its ability to manage declines,” says Ryan Todd, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein, the US financial group. This would contribute to a “severe problem” in world oil supplies within the next three to five years. For Mexico, it would mean the gradual loss of 40 per cent of its tax revenue.
International oil companies are, however, competing not only with resource holders but also with national oil companies that have turned resource seekers – highlighting the issue of energy security.
Jimmy Carter, who as US president during the oil shocks of the late 1970s passed the most sweeping energy legislation in the country’s history, says in an interview that energy insecurity is “still a major issue and will be increasingly a crisis situation in the years to come”. The present situation differs from the one he tackled in one main respect: “Today we are experiencing on a global basis competition from China and India that I didn’t know when I was president.”
The biggest of those competitors is CNPC. It has a solid foothold in China’s large reserves, owning 88 per cent of PetroChina. But it is its rapid push to secure international reserves that makes it so powerful.
Backed by Beijing’s feverish quest to secure the energy it needs for China to develop, CNPC has fanned out across the globe into about 20 countries from Azerbaijan to Ecuador. It has pumped more than $8bn into the oil industry of war-torn Sudan, when concerns over human rights deter others in the industry from involvement with Khartoum. “CNPC are the rule makers on access to new reserves in new markets and they are changing the competition for resources, services, capital and markets,” says Mr West.
Nor is CNPC the only company changing the rules in the race to secure assets. Smaller national oil companies such as Petrobras and Petronas are also keeping international energy executives awake at night.
Petrobras, for example, has been at the forefront of the technology needed to pull oil out of ultra-deep waters, such as those that abut Brazil’s shores. The company is now using those skills to compete head-on with the likes of BP and ExxonMobil in Angola as well as the US Gulf of Mexico.
Malaysia’s Petronas has also spread out internationally, notably into Sudan and Burma. It receives about 30 per cent of its corporate revenues from abroad and operates in more than 26 countries, producing oil from about 50 projects, more than half of which it runs, Rice University’s report notes.
Companies such as Petrobras and Petronas have the advantage that they can more easily woo fellow resource-rich national oil companies. International oil companies continue to suffer from their 1980s and 1990s reputation as haughty and patronising business partners.
Malcolm Brinded, head of Shell’s exploration and production, acknowledges this when he says international oil companies need to ask themselves, “How are we going to make this marriage work?” He describes Shell and other international oil companies as “much less paternalistic than in the partnerships of 20 years ago”.
Examples of this include anything from the tone the international groups use in negotiations, to employing and training local engineers and building infrastructure, such as desalination plants, even though it might not be needed for the project in which the company is involved.
International oil executives are making these concessions because they believe today’s power balance is unlikely to change any time soon. Christophe de Margerie, chief executive of Total and the man who made his mark brokering deals with national oil companies in the Middle East and Africa, says: “I think this new world will stay even if the price of oil drops a little bit. People will keep in their soul that they have this power – it will take time before they change.”
But he adds that his optimistic side believes that eventually national oil companies, many of them battling declining fields and other technical and managerial challenges, “might be forced to consider, ‘well, whatever we said, those people are worth working with because we need them to develop our reserves’.”
The wish expressed by Mr de Margerie could not be further from the self-assured position his predecessor at CFP, Total’s ancestor, used to enjoy 60 years ago. Yet it is a worry not only for Mr de Margerie and his peers. If the new seven sisters do not live up to their potential, the world’s continued economic growth, China’s development and the west’s comfort and wealth will become far from assured.
SAUDIS HEAD A RICH FIELD
With 25 per cent of the world’s oil reserves and the capacity to produce nearly triple the amount of any other group, Saudi Aramco is the world’s most successful national oil company. The House of Saud dictates energy policy but leaves day-to-day strategy to the capable technocrats who run it. Saudi Aramco is investing $50bn (£26bn, €38bn) over 15-20 years but its biggest fields are ageing.
Gazprom No other company keeps Europe, and increasingly Asia, on tenterhooks more than Gazprom. As a tool of the Kremlin, it has been involved in a gas dispute with Ukraine and a debate with Japan and China over competing pipelines from Siberia as well as the grab of Royal Dutch Shell’s majority stake in the Sakhalin II liquefied natural gas project.
Gazprom has increased its influence with upstream deals in central Asia, including Iran. Downstream, its push into the European market has set off moves to limit its access.
CNPC/PetroChina All three of China’s top oil companies have been making ambitious moves abroad. But China National Petroleum Corporation, with its 88 per cent owned PetroChina as a listed subsidiary, is the biggest and has the widest international reach.PetroChina holds most of its overseas assets in a joint venture with its parent and is active in about 20 countries from Azerbaijan to Ecuador. CNPC retains sole control of its controversial assets in Sudan.
NIOC Iran is one of the few Middle East countries with massive hydrocarbon wealth that is open to investment by foreign energy companies. National Iranian Oil Company has partnerships with Italian, French, Dutch and Norwegian companies and collaborates with Chinese and Russian groups.
Yet South Pars, the world’s biggest gas field, remains so untapped that Iran is a net gas importer.
PdvsaPresident Hugo Chávez this year signed a law that allows Pdvsa to seize control of the $30bn Orinoco Belt heavy crude oil projects. Pdvsa’s production is shrinking but it is still important to the fortunes of international energy groups, many of whose contracts are being rewritten.
PetrobrasThe strength of Petrobras is in finding and producing oil from deep waters. Expertise gained in Brazil’s waters is being applied in offshore west Africa and the Gulf of Mexico, where its Cottonwood field is in production.
Petronas Malaysia’s national oil company has been described as the role model others would like to follow. Though a top-three exporter of LNG, Petronas risks falling behind the oil groups of Qatar, Nigeria and Indonesia.
Halliburton opening office in United Arab Emirates
Halliburton opening Dubai headquarters
Oilfield services company plans United Arab Emirates office to expand mideast business.
March 11 2007: 7:04 PM EDT
MANAMA, (Reuters) -- Halliburton Co., the U.S. oilfield service giant, said Sunday its chief executive plans to open a corporate headquarters in the United Arab Emirates in an effort to expand business in the Eastern Hemisphere.
"My office will be in Dubai, and I will run our entire worldwide operations from that office," Halliburton chief executive David Lesar said at an energy conference in Bahrain. "Dubai is a great business centre."
The company said it will maintain its global headquarters in Houston, where the company is currently based.
An analyst said the move made sense. "The company as a whole has continued to diversify internationally, and the Middle East is a point that they have targeted," said William Sanchez, a U.S.-based analyst at Howard Weil Inc. "They are being opportunistic in putting the CEO in the middle of the action."
During 2006, more than 38 percent of Halliburton's $13 billion in oil services revenue was generated in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Sanchez said he believed Halliburton's move to Dubai is not tax related. Instead he views it as a strategic play.
Lesar said Halliburton is considering listing its shares on one of the Middle East bourses as it looks at growth potential in the hemisphere.
"One of the things that we would like to pursue ... is a listing of our shares in the Middle East," Lesar said on the sidelines of the event. Halliburton has not yet decided in which country it would list its shares.
"At this point in time we clearly see there are greater opportunities in the Eastern Hemisphere than the Western Hemisphere," he told reporters.
Growth
Halliburton would spend a large part of its $1.4 billion investment budget for the year in the Middle East, he said.
Oil and gas service companies have hiked prices for their services over the past two years as the sector strains to bring enough capacity on line to meet rapidly rising demand.
Many new supply projects are in the oil-producing countries of the Middle East, while Asia accounts for most of the rising demand.
In contrast, a slide in natural gas prices in the United States has prompted investor concern that oil and gas companies might cut back on spending in North America.
Halliburton has long been involved in the Middle East energy sector.
KBR Inc., the engineering and military-services contractor unit that Halliburton is in the process of splitting off, is the Pentagon's largest contractor in Iraq. The company has faced several investigations into alleged overbilling there, as well as for its links to Iran, where U.S. companies are forbidden from operating.
Vice President Cheney was head of the company from 1995-2000.
Lesar also said he expected the price of oil to stay above $40 a barrel, providing good conditions for future investment in the oil and gas industry.
Oil giant that runs on grease of politics
Nigeria is rich but almost none of it flows to the people
Gail Bensinger, Chronicle Foreign Editor
Sunday, March 11, 2007
(03-11) 04:00 PDT Abuja, Nigeria -- This may be Africa's most populous nation, playing a prominent role in regional politics and lining up with the West in the war on terrorism. But that is not what American business and government leaders mean when they refer to Nigeria as an "indispensable partner."
What they're talking about is one word: oil.
More than 1 of every 10 barrels of oil consumed in the United States each year comes from Nigeria, the only OPEC member in sub-Saharan Africa. A handful of giant multinational oil companies, including San Ramon's Chevron, are in partnership with the government to exploit the enormous reserves in the Niger Delta and, increasingly, offshore.
"There is oil in this country," Bala Mohammad, an aide to the governor of northern Kano state, told a group of visiting American journalists earlier this year, "but it doesn't come to us; it comes to you."
The huge haul of easy oil money has led to corruption and impunity on an astonishing scale. Nigeria gets a large proportion of its income from oil and gas, meaning that its annual budget is far more dependent on world oil prices than on national productivity. Politicians are assured of an income stream no matter how badly they disappoint their constituents, so they have little incentive to invest in the infrastructure that could ease everyday life and encourage development.
Petroleum riches have not helped lift the vast majority of Nigerians out of abject poverty. A country with reserves of 36 billion barrels of oil and 184 trillion cubic feet of natural gas cannot deliver electricity to its people. Factories cannot operate without reliable power, so industries are idle and unemployment is rampant. As irrigation schemes have faltered and farmland turns irreversibly into desert, Nigeria has morphed from a food exporter to a food importer. Other resources that could contribute to development languish, including coal, gold and industrial metals.
Crude oil is sent abroad for refining, then re-imported to supply gas stations where long lines of drivers wait under the baking sun. Travelers along the main north-south highway risk getting shaken down, or worse, at the impromptu roadblocks that spring up after dark. Everybody, rich and poor, buys water, and anyone who can afford it has a generator. In most cities, sewers are open ditches running alongside the streets. Garbage remains uncollected. Typhoid, malaria, HIV/AIDS and other preventable diseases are rampant.
Oil distorts the federal system of government in many ways. It interferes with a genuine census, for example, because oil revenues are distributed by a formula based on population so states try to pump up their figures to get a bigger piece of the pie. Industry practices -- notably burning natural gas, a process called flaring -- have befouled the air, water and land. In oil-producing regions, bunkering -- organized theft of crude by the tanker-ful -- is an illicit trade in which, the locals say, the military engages. Kidnapping for profit is on the upswing, helped along by the payment of ransoms.
Would Nigeria have been better off without oil? Outside of the government and the oil industry, a lot of people think so.
Patrick Utomi, director of the Centre of Applied Economics at Pan African University in Lagos, describes the state of the economy as "two steps forward, four steps back." He is a candidate for president from one of the numerous minor parties, running on a platform that calls for diversifying the economy. As things now stand, he said, "The economic players are taking off profits and not creating wealth."
M. T. Seigha, an activist from the delta region, says the Nigerians who live in the industry's shadows are left to endure its downside -- environmental degradation and lack of opportunity for work in the industry. "Our thinking is that Shell, Mobil and everybody should pack up their bags please and go back where they came from," he said, "because we are not benefiting from it."
Not everyone has suffered deprivation, of course. Holding national office has enriched politicians and the "Big Men" who back them. The country has endured numerous military dictatorships, including some led by officers who have re-entered politics as civilians. If -- and this is a big if -- the national elections take place as scheduled next month, it will represent the first hand-over of power from one elected president to another in the 47 years since Nigeria won its independence from the British in 1960.
There is a delicate political balance between the Christian south and the Muslim north. President Olusegun Obasanjo is a southerner and a former coup leader. He tried to have the constitution changed so he could seek a third term, and many politics-watchers say he's planning to remain the behind-the-throne power by hand-picking the candidate of his People's Democratic Party, Umaru Yar'Adua, who fell ill last week and remained in a German hospital.
Meanwhile, officials in the administration throw up obstacles to registering voters and preparing polling sites.
"These elections have been designed to fail," said Jibrin Ibrahim, a former political science professor who now heads the Centre for Democracy and Development, a nongovernmental political research organization.
"We've had enough of this president," Ibrahim added. "The issue before us now: Has he got the message?"
Obasanjo's successor was supposed to be Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a northerner. But the two men fell out and Atiku, as he is universally known, bolted to another faction, the Action Congress.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission recently cited Atiku as one of more than 130 national and state politicians unfit for office. Atiku denies the numerous allegations that he has enriched himself while in office, including his link with the mysterious frozen money found last year in the refrigerator of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-La..
Atiku deftly sidestepped questions from the American journalists about his financial dealings, complaining that the president is "trying to fire me and I don't want to be fired."
Obasanjo considers establishment of the commission as one of his proudest achievements. He bragged with no apparent sense of irony that Transparency International, which rates countries on good or bad governance, has bumped Nigeria up a few notches from dead-last on his watch. "There are not many countries in the world that have achieved what we have done" to fight corruption, Obasanjo told us.
The 4-year-old commission is headed by Nuhu Ribadu, a boyish-looking crime-fighter with the intensity of a true believer. While he has been criticized for going too easy on Obasanjo and the ruling party, Ribadu has racked up an impressive list of fraud convictions, including some office-holders, and has succeeded in convincing the National Assembly to enact laws cracking down on money laundering.
Among his proudest achievements, Ribadu said, was virtually shutting down Nigeria's most notorious cottage industry -- the e-mail spam that dangles a huge payoff, providing the unwitting mark puts up a small amount to facilitate the deal. The commission's crackdowns have recovered $750 million that has been returned to victims all over the world, he noted.
While inboxes remain full of those too-good-to-be-true appeals, most of them now originate in other African countries or Eastern Europe, Ribadu said. But he ruefully conceded that it was easier to get rid of the scammers than the bad association that continues to link "Nigeria" with "scam."
Ribadu said he has received numerous death threats. "This is the most dangerous work in the world today -- it's more dangerous than walking the streets of Baghdad."
In the sun-bleached courtyard of the ornate palace, a dozen tall men in boldly patterned red-and-green robes and red turbans mill about, alert for the first sound of the siren.
Finally a police car, lights flashing, speeds through the archway and slams to a halt. Behind it, a black Rolls Royce eases to a stop. The waiting men gather by the car's rear door, holding out their arms to create a protective curtain as it opens. One holds an ornate umbrella large enough to shade a San Francisco patio as a white-shod foot emerges.
Then the men in red and green fall in line behind the passenger, chanting about what he is doing as he enters his desert-baroque palace.
The emir has arrived.
The emir is the traditional ruler of Kano, in Nigeria's Muslim north. The ceremonial trappings of his office, and his quiet advice to the politicians who run Kano state, provide a link to pre-colonial times before cell phones and air conditioning and traffic jams and Internet cafes. Before oil.
Not far away, an open plaza the size of Union Square is stippled with dozens of debris-filled concrete holes, each about a yard across. These dye pits are an open-air reminder that Nigeria used to have a successful textile industry, raising cotton and producing finished cloth for domestic use and export.
Once, every pit was in use, and ownership passed from father to son. Today, a solitary man wielding a stick slowly submerges a pair of pants into a hole filled with dark-blue dye, then slowly pulls it out, repeating the motion in a timeless rhythm. Hawkers crowd the few visitors, offering traditional tie-dyed indigo fabrics that once found ready markets at home and abroad.
If the emir is a link to Nigeria's past, the empty dye pits reflect the reality of the present. Some hand-weaving still exists in Kano and elsewhere, but the entire industry has fallen behind its African neighbors, unable to compete regionally in mass production of cotton textiles or in international markets where synthetic fabrics dominate the cheap-cloth market.
If laundry is one way to measure the state of an impoverished community, then the residents of the Jungle, the locals' name for the enormous Lagos slum of Ajegunle, are about as poor as they come. In the mile upon mile of tiny houses lining unpaved streets, there is almost no drying laundry to be seen. Many people don't have clothes to spare.
There is a vivid sense of vitality here. Residents treat the streets as open-air living rooms. Children surround visitors with cameras, and cheer loudly when someone takes their photos. The sound of Fela's Afrobeat blasts from boom boxes. But there is no running water, no electricity, no sewers, no garbage removal. Five, 10, even 20 people can live in a room that is maybe 10 feet square. The occasional dwelling bears a sign reading "THIS HOUSE IS NOT FOR SALE" -- evidence of another kind of Nigerian scam, selling houses you don't own.
When the rains come, the ditches that collect sewage overflow and the dirt streets turn to thick, viscous mud. Some years bring flooding, but residents say they stay put because there is no place to go.
Oil riches have not brought the people of the Jungle many things. Safety. Privacy. Opportunities. Peace and quiet. A government safety net.
There are some small signs Nigeria is getting to a better place, though at a pace that is unlikely to bring change soon enough for the people of Ajegunle.
Next month's election is one such signal, although the three main candidates -- Yar'Adua, Atiku and Muhammadu Buhari, another ex-military dictator running on the ticket of the All Nigerian Peoples Party -- are seen as flawed. All are from the north, in accordance with an agreed-upon transfer of power from the Christian south of Obasanjo to a leader from the Muslim north.
Festus Okoye, a human-rights lawyer in the northern city of Karbala, says much depends on whether the elections are peaceful, and whether the results appear legitimate to voters.
If the new government tackles the problems of poverty and the economy improves, people will be more comfortable with democracy, he predicted. "You cannot have democracy without democrats."
Chronicle Foreign Editor Gail Bensinger recently traveled to Nigeria on an editors fellowship from the International Reporting Project at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. E-mail her at gbensinger@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Chevron could partner with China oil producers
By Joe Carroll Bloomberg News
Published: September 14, 2006
Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company after ExxonMobil, is in talks to join with Chinese petroleum producers on exploration and production projects one year after beating out Cnooc, a Chinese oil company, to acquire Unocal.
The company is in discussions with Cnooc, PetroChina and China Petroleum & Chemical, known as Sinopec, "to explore partnership opportunities both inside and outside of China," said Steve Del Regno, managing director of Chevron's liquefied natural gas trading business in Asia. The talks could lead to joint development of oil and gas deposits, he said.
Chevron, which opened an office in Beijing earlier this year, seeks to capitalize on growing petroleum demand in the world's most populous nation. Cnooc is already a partner with Chevron and Woodside Petroleum in a gas export project off the coast of Western Australia that made its first shipment of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to China in June.
"Cnooc and Sinopec are looking for U.S. partners so they can gain access to oil for China," said Mark Kajita, a fund manager at Baker Boyer Bancorp.
The chief executive officer of Chevron, David O'Reilly, has expanded in Asia to tap oil and gas reserves close to booming markets in China and India. The San Ramon, California-based company bought a $300 million stake in Reliance Petroleum of India in April that is expected to help finance a new refinery in Gujarat and open the door to exploration deals with Reliance's parent.
"Chevron views China as an important market for LNG in the future, and we want to remain engaged with potential customers and trading partners here," Del Regno said Tuesday at the U.S.-China Oil & Gas Industry Forum in Hangzhou, China. "We value this relationship and hope it continues to grow."
Sinopec, the largest Asian maker of gasoline, diesel and other fuels refined from crude oil, could also be interested in gaining access to Chevron's network of filling stations to increase Sinopec's share of the global retail fuels market, Kajita, of Baker Boyer, said.
Cnooc abandoned an $18.5 billion cash bid for Unocal in August 2005, after concluding that U.S. lawmakers would scuttle any deal on the grounds of national security.
Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company after ExxonMobil, is in talks to join with Chinese petroleum producers on exploration and production projects one year after beating out Cnooc, a Chinese oil company, to acquire Unocal.
The company is in discussions with Cnooc, PetroChina and China Petroleum & Chemical, known as Sinopec, "to explore partnership opportunities both inside and outside of China," said Steve Del Regno, managing director of Chevron's liquefied natural gas trading business in Asia. The talks could lead to joint development of oil and gas deposits, he said.
Chevron, which opened an office in Beijing earlier this year, seeks to capitalize on growing petroleum demand in the world's most populous nation. Cnooc is already a partner with Chevron and Woodside Petroleum in a gas export project off the coast of Western Australia that made its first shipment of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to China in June.
"Cnooc and Sinopec are looking for U.S. partners so they can gain access to oil for China," said Mark Kajita, a fund manager at Baker Boyer Bancorp.
The chief executive officer of Chevron, David O'Reilly, has expanded in Asia to tap oil and gas reserves close to booming markets in China and India. The San Ramon, California-based company bought a $300 million stake in Reliance Petroleum of India in April that is expected to help finance a new refinery in Gujarat and open the door to exploration deals with Reliance's parent.
"Chevron views China as an important market for LNG in the future, and we want to remain engaged with potential customers and trading partners here," Del Regno said Tuesday at the U.S.-China Oil & Gas Industry Forum in Hangzhou, China. "We value this relationship and hope it continues to grow."
Sinopec, the largest Asian maker of gasoline, diesel and other fuels refined from crude oil, could also be interested in gaining access to Chevron's network of filling stations to increase Sinopec's share of the global retail fuels market, Kajita, of Baker Boyer, said.
Cnooc abandoned an $18.5 billion cash bid for Unocal in August 2005, after concluding that U.S. lawmakers would scuttle any deal on the grounds of national security.
Aban Offshore owns 97% in Sinvest
India Infoline News Service / Mumbai Feb 19, 2007 16:26
This has happened post the mandatory offer for the Norwegian firm. The offer ended on Feb 16. Aban International Norway received acceptance for about 28.8mn shares of Sinvest
Aban Offshore Ltd. announced on Monday that it now owns about 97% equity stake in Sinvest ASA after the mandatory open offer for the Norwegian company ended on Feb 16.
Aban International Norway AS received acceptance for about 28.8mn shares of Sinvest under the mandatory offer. Together with existing ownership of 6.07mn Sinvest shares, Aban International Norway holds approximately 34.9mn Sinvest shares, representing about 57% of the equity share capital of the target firm.
Aban Offshore, through its subsidiary, Aban Singapore Pte Ltd and Aban International Norway holds approximately 59.15mn shares of Sinvest, representing about 97% of the share capital of the Oslo Stock Exchange listed company.
Prior to the mandatory offer, 50.01% of the share capital of Sinvest was held by Aban International Norway and Aban Singapore.
The outlay for the mandatory offer was estimated at approximately US$800mn. The mandatory offer commenced on January 9. The transaction was based on an equity value of about US$1.32bn and an enterprise value of about US$1.8bn.
Sinvest is a large jack-up drilling company owning three new-built premium jack-up drilling rigs and having 5 jack-up drilling rigs at various stages of construction in Singapore shipyards. Two of the new-built jack-up rigs have been deployed with Hardy Oil and Shell Brunei while the third rig has secured a deployment with Shell Malaysia.
Sinvest also owns a 50% stake in Venture Drilling AS, a Norwegian company that has taken a drill ship on long term bareboat charter. This drill ship is set to be deployed with Exxon Mobil in West Africa. Sinvest also holds the entire equity of Beta Drilling AS, another Norwegian company that has taken on bareboat a jack-up drilling rig, which is undergoing a shipyard upgrade for being ready for suitable deployment opportunities.
With the completion of the mandatory offer, Aban Offshore will now be placed in the league of the Top 10 offshore drilling service providers in the world in terms of offshore drilling assets under management.
OT: Conoco, Chevron (& XOM) agree May 1 handover in Venezuela
Reuters
CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com 03 09 07
Venezuela said on Thursday U.S. oil giants ConocoPhillips and Chevron Corp. have agreed to cede by May 1 operations of multibillion-dollar projects in the Orinoco heavy crude belt.
In compliance with a decree issued last month by President Hugo Chavez, the companies will form transition committees to oversee the handover of their projects' operations to state oil company PDVSA.
Exxon Mobil Corp. has already agreed to pass control of its operations to PDVSA by the tight May Day deadline.
Chavez, who is pressing a raft of nationalizations since a December landslide re-election, wants the state to take at least 60 percent of the projects that develop tarry crude in the OPEC nation.
Although he set the May deadline for PDVSA to take the operational helm, he is allowing the foreign investors until almost September to finalize the terms of their stakeholding in the projects.
PDVSA director Eulogio del Pino said in a company statement the committees were being formed "so that the nationalization of these businesses should be finalized by May 1 and that the operations should be transferred from the foreign firms to the Venezuelan state."
The four Orinoco projects, valued at more than $30 billion, turn tar-like oil into around 600,000 barrels per day of lighter synthetic crude.
For years, Chavez, who declares himself an enemy of capitalism, has squeezed foreign oil investments with nationalization moves and taken over some assets in other industries.
But the major oil companies' Orinoco investments are the largest he has taken on since coming to power in 1999. The pace of the takeovers and the absence of open opposition from the companies have surprised political and economic analysts.
There has been no word on whether the Sincor heavy crude project, involving France's Total and Norway's Statoil ASA , will transfer to PDVSA control in the Orinoco.
But Total's chief executive said this week his company regards the Orinoco as a priority and promised to work "shoulder to shoulder" with Venezuela over its investments in the country.
Del Pino also said Conoco agreed to set up a transition body for the May 1 handover of operations in a natural gas field, Corocoro, which is covered by last month's decree too.
Reuters 08 03 07
Copyright© 2007 Reuters. All Rights Reserved.
Walldog, I doubt SEO is doing all of this on his own. I've read a bunch of articles from different Nigerian publications that state he's a front man for the President, VP, and or other high ranking Nigerian officials......... So it's easy to maneuver when you're backed by the President in a country that wheels and deals.
Let's hope SEO can continue to maneuver after the upcoming Presidential election.
Yes, I'm loooong and strong on ERHC Energy.
ND9
Addax 3/7/07 Capital Markets charts posted............
http://www.addaxpetroleum.com/_media/Investor_Presentation_2007-03-07.pdf
Exxon Plans to Lift Output a Million Barrels a Day
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By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: March 8, 2007
Exxon Mobil, the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company, which earned a record $39.5 billion last year, explained yesterday how it was going to spend all that cash.
The chairman and chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, said that Exxon planned to increase investments in oil and natural gas projects to more than $20 billion a year in the next three years, as it faces higher costs. Exxon’s capital expenses have increased more than 30 percent since 2002.
Exxon expects to add one million barrels a day of oil and gas to its current production as the company starts more than 20 projects in the next three years, Mr. Tillerson said at an analyst meeting yesterday in New York. These include liquefied natural gas projects in Qatar, deepwater fields in Angola and the Gulf of Mexico, and oil fields in the North Sea.
The company, whose emphasis on capital discipline is unrivaled in the industry, said that much of the increase in capital spending was for new projects and not to make up for inflated costs. The company also plans to keep spending billions to buy back shares and pay large dividends to its shareholders.
Thanks to high oil prices, which averaged more than $65 a barrel in New York last year, oil companies have had record earnings — none more than Exxon, which last year, for the second consecutive year, reported the largest profit of any American corporation.
At home, the high profits have dismayed some lawmakers and led the Democratic-controlled Congress to seek higher taxes from oil companies. Abroad, Exxon is facing tough negotiations with Venezuela, which is seeking to gain more control over its energy sector.
Like much of the rest of the industry, Exxon is facing sharply higher costs because of increased energy prices and more activity in the oil and gas sector. The cost of everything involved in finding and pumping oil — from equipment and drilling rates, to manpower, steel, construction material and engineering fees — has increased more than 50 percent since 2004, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultancy.
Exxon, based in Irving, Tex., has been known for its attention to cost control and financial efficiency. That message was repeated by Exxon’s managers on Wednesday, who stressed that budget discipline was the reason for the company’s financial and operational performance. Exxon produces 2.7 million barrels of oil and 9.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day.
“Exxon is not immune to market cost increases,” Stuart R. McGill, a senior vice president for exploration and development projects, said during the analyst meeting. But, he added, the company had made up much of these increases through asset sales and internal cost reduction.
“We’re a company with a well-deserved reputation for discipline and consistency,” Mr. McGill said.
In 2006, Exxon’s spending on exploration and development projects was $19.9 billion, 12 percent more than in 2005. The company expects that figure to average more than $20 billion from 2008 to 2011.
Over the last five years, Exxon has bought back $58 billion worth of its shares, including $25 billion last year. It has also paid $34 billion in dividends since 2002.
“We will continue to be the industry leader,” Mr. Tillerson said during the presentation to dozens of analysts, which started promptly at 9 a.m. and lasted exactly three hours. “Relative to the competition, we’re confident we’re going to continue to operate above the industry.”
The only downside to the company’s outlook, analysts said, was that Exxon seemed to have abandoned a production growth target of 3 percent. Even then, executives cited delays at several projects operated by rivals — like the Kashagan oil field of Eni or the Thunder Horse drilling platform of BP — in which Exxon is a minority partner.
“Among the major oil companies, Exxon is the most disciplined in the way it invests, in the way it screens projects, and in the way it executes these projects,” said James L. Smith, a finance professor at Southern Methodist University’s business school, who has been a consultant for energy companies, including Exxon. “There is an Exxon way to approach every business prospect.”
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