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Egypt poised to ramp up LNG exports

in coming weeks, oil minister says

EGYPT EGYPT is preparing to expand its LNG exports the last few years.
in the coming weeks in order to exploit a recent Italy’s Eni reached deals with Spain’s Naturgy
rebound in prices and its increasingly abundant and its Egyptian partners in December that have
supply, Oil Minister Tarek el-Molla said on Jan- paved the way for the plant’s restart by settling a
uary 27. long-running legal dispute over its earlier clo-
Cargoes have been booked for delivery from sure. Under those agreements, Naturgy left the
the Idku export terminal until the end of March, project, under which it had been receiving the
while the Damietta terminal is due to restart by equivalent of 3.5bn cubic metres per year of gas
the end of February, el-Molla explained. to supply its combined-cycle gas-fired thermal
“In 2020, the prices were very stressed, very power plants (TPPs) in Spain.
low, and we were not able to export, except a few In turn, its share was divided up between
cargoes throughout the year,” the ministry said. Eni, Egyptian Natural Gas Holding (EGAS) and
“Starting from October 2020 until now, we have Egyptian General Petroleum Corp. (EGPC).
already booked all our volumes to be exported Upon completion of the deal, equity in Dami-
from the Idku plant. We have already [booked] etta LNG’s operator SEGAS will be split between
cargoes to the end of March.” Eni, with 50%; EGAS, with 40%, and EGPC,
The 7.2mn tonne per year (tpy) Royal Dutch with 10%. ™
Shell-operated Idku plant halted exports in late
March, in response to the collapse in global LNG
prices triggered by the coronavirus (COVID-
19) pandemic. Its next shipment was not until
July, followed by another three-month hiatus
until October.
According to Vortexa data, the Idku plant
only dispatched 19 cargoes in 2020, versus 54 a
year earlier. By contrast, a total of seven cargoes
have been shipped from the Idku plant since the
beginning of 2021, with most of these volumes
destined for the energy-hungry markets of Tur-
key, India and China
The 5mn tpy Damietta facility has been idle
since 2012, when it was closed down because
Egypt lacked the gas supply to keep it running.
The situation is now very different, following a
surge in Egyptian offshore gas production over The Damietta LNG plant can turn out 5 tpy of LNG (Photo: Egypt Cranes)

TNOG wants to bring OML 17

output back up to 100,000 bpd

NIGERIA TNOG Oil & Gas, a Nigerian company estab- than 30,000 barrels per day of crude oil. He
lished by Heirs Holdings and Transnational said TNOG hoped to bring that figure back up
Corp. of Nigeria (Transcorp), is reportedly to 100,000 bpd, the level that Shell Petroleum
looking to raise output more than three-fold at Development Co. (SPDC), a Nigeria-based affil-
Oil Mining Lease 17 (OML 17), a licence area in iate of Royal Dutch Shell (UK-Netherlands), was
which it recently acquired a 45% stake. once able to sustain.
Samuel Nwanze, the CFO of Heirs Hold- Nwanze faulted SPDC for the decline, say-
ing, told Bloomberg in an interview earlier this ing the company had not given OML 17 a high
week that OML 17 was currently yielding less enough priority when allocating capex funds.

Week 05 03•February•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P9