Tag Archives: gas

KMG EP minority shareholders defeat Kazakhstan’s oil and gas plans

AUG. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After months of increasingly bitter rows, minority shareholders at London-traded KMG EP voted against selling their stakes in the company to its parent Kazakhstan’s state owned Kazmunaigas. Kazmunaigas had been looking to boost its 58% stake in the company, one of its few assets which have been doing relatively well during an increasingly tough oil-linked economic downturn. KMG EP mainly owns downstream operations which earn US dollars. These have been more profitable than many of KMG’s upstream operations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

Greece says Azerbaijan’s SOCAR deal to buy gas pipelines will happen in September

JULY 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Italy’s Snam could make an offer to buy 17% of Greek gas distributor DESFA by the end of September, salvaging plans by Azerbaijan’s SOCAR to buy Greece’s pipeline network.

Earlier this month, SOCAR officials had suggested the deal, which is considered vital for Azerbaijani aspirations to supply gas to Europe, was off because a lower-than-expected

price rise by the Greece government for consumers had undermined its value.

But Stergios Pitsiorlas, chairman of the state Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, told Bloomberg that the Snam-SOCAR tandem will buy a 66% share in DESFA.

Snam declined to comment.

SOCAR officials flew into Athens this week to discuss the deal. News reports from both Greece and Azerbaijan have called the negotiations ‘tense’.

In 2013, SOCAR won a bid to buy 66% of DESFA, Greece’s gas distributor.

The deal was later frozen by the European Commission, citing 2009 regulation which stops integration between gas suppliers and distributors.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

PetroKazakhstan’s production shrinks in H1

JULY 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — London-traded upstream oil company KMG EP said its H1 2016 production shrank by 0.7% to 6.1m tonnes of oil. In particular, the company said that production slowed significantly at PetroKazakhstan’s operations in central Kazakhstan. KMG EP owns a 33% stake in PetroKazakhstan, while China’s CNPC owns the rest. KMG EP is a subsidiary of state-owned energy company Kazmunaigas.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

EBRD considers stake rise in Azerbaijan

JULY 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said it will postpone its decision to increase its stake in Holcim Azerbaijan, a cement company. The EBRD already owns a 10% stake in the company. Switzerland-based LafargeHolcim (66%), Germany’s Holcim (10%) and other private investors (14%) own the rest of the company. The EBRD said it will wait until September to take a decision.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Georgia sign gas deal with Iran

JULY 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iran signed an agreement with Georgia to export gas via Armenia, Iranian official media reported. In February, Georgia had said that gas supplies from Iran would only be considered in the long term, as Azerbaijan was able to export enough gas to meet Georgia’s growing demands. With Azerbaijan’s production declining and Iran’s export to Armenia due to increase, Georgia could now find another supplier in Iran.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Gas tariff rise in Kazakhstan

JULY 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh anti-monopoly agency approved a 39% increase in the top rate it can charge for pumping gas through its pipeline network to 1,769 tenge/1,000 cubic metres ($5), in a move that will impact domestic and industrial gas prices. The new tariff ceiling will come into effect on Sept. 1 and will be valid until 2020. Gas price rises are a sensitive issue. Governments across the region have been raising prices slowly, moving away from Soviet subsidies. This, though, has frustrated people and triggered anti government protests.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

EBRD considers Azerbaijani gas

JULY 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said it is negotiating financing TAP, a trans-Adriatic gas pipeline which forms part of the so-called Southern Gas Corridor network that will pump Azerbaijani gas to Europe. In an interview with AP, the EBRD said it is looking to invest €500m ($550m) in the project. Azerbaijan’s state-owned SOCAR (20%), BP (20%), Italy’s Snam (20%), Belgium’s Fluxys (19%), Spain’s Enagas (16%), and Switzerland’s Axpo (5%) own TAP.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Stock market: Nostrum Oil and Gas

AUG 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Amsterdam-based Nostrum Oil & Gas has posted lower revenues and production in H1 2016, but its share price continued to hold at around 300p because of bullish forward forecasts.

The company’s CEO Kai-Uwe Kessel said that in an era of low oil prices, cost-cutting is paramount. He also said that the company was focusing on building a small pipeline that would reduce its transport costs in 2017.

By focusing on cutting costs, however, the company seems to have been unable to regain either its production or its revenue stream from last year. Both were down by 12% and 41% respectively in H1 2016.

In the company’s statement, Mr Kessel remained confident that Nostrum’s production target will be met by the end of the year.

“We look forward to increasing production throughout the second half of the year to achieve our target 2016 production of 40,000 boepd,” he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Gazprom Kyrgyzstan repairs pipeline

JULY 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Maintenance work at the Bukhara-Tashkent-Bishkek-Almaty gas pipeline will result in gas cutoffs in several Kyrgyz towns, the press service of Gazprom Kyrgyzstan said. The pipeline is part of a Soviet-designed system pumping Uzbek gas to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and the repairs and gas cutoffs show just how antiquated the pipeline network has become.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

China to build piplene between Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

JULY 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — China will go ahead with the construction of a fourth line of the Central Asia-China gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, officials said. Luo Wei Dong, a deputy at China’s ministry of commerce told the Kremlin- funded Sputnik news agency that the pipeline will be built in the near future and will increase the overall capacity by 54% to 85b cubic metres/year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)