Page 16 - FSUOGM Week 01 2021

FSUOGM NRG FSUOGM

The fields are slated to yield more than 2mn bar- Brownsville in Texas signed a long-term lease
rels per day (bpd) at their peak and may also con- with the port.
tain natural gas as well. Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin The Australian asset sale involves Royal
recently speculated that Vostok Oil might even- Dutch Shell, which said on December 21 that
tually be able to deliver as much as 50mn tonnes it had agreed to divest a 26.25% stake in the
per year (tpy) of LNG to the world market. Queensland Curtis LNG (QCLNG) common
Meanwhile, Rosneft has also consolidated its facilities to Global Infrastructure Partners Aus-
control over Vostok Oil by buying out a private tralia. The stake will be sold for $2.5bn, in a deal
partner. The company announced over the hol- anticipated to close in the first half of 2021.
iday break that it had closed the acquisition of Shell currently owns 100% of the QCLNG
100% stakes in firms called Taimyrneftegaz and common facilities, as well as a 73.75% interest
Taimyrburservis. The former is a subsidiary of in the overall QCLNG project. The super-major
Neftegazholding, a private oil firm with rights to said the sale would bring its interest in the com-
the Payakha fields, which will be part of Vostok mon facilities into alignment with its stake in the
Oil, as well as other large onshore licences. overall project as it works to sell non-core assets
The ins and outs of Rosneft’s transaction and high-grade and simplify its portfolio.
with Neftegazholding are unclear. However, the In Croatia, meanwhile, the Krk floating LNG
available evidence suggests that some form of (FLNG) terminal entered service on January 1.
asset swap is underway. Russia’s company reg- On that date, the Tristar Ruby tanker arrived to
istry shows that Neftegazholding has become offload the first commercial cargo, consisting of
the owner of a 9% share in RN-Severnaya Neft, LNG from the US, at the facility.
a Rosneft subsidiary working in the Timan-Pe- These developments occurred as the pros-
chora Basin. pects for US exporters of the super-chilled fuel
In other news, the Austro-Romanian oil improved, thanks to higher LNG prices. There
firm OMV Petrom has agreed to sell its assets in are even signs of greater long-term confidence,
Kazakhstan to a local private company, drawing as illustrated by Texas LNG signing a 50-year
a close to two decades of work in the country. lease agreement with the Port of Brownsville
OMV Petrom will transfer 100% interests in its to support its proposed export terminal. Texas
Kazakh subsidiaries Kom-Munai and Tasbulat LNG joins Annova LNG and Rio Grande LNG
Oil to a private company based in Nur-Sultan in making the commitment.
called Magnetic Oil. Kom-Munai controls the
Komsomolskoye oilfield in Kazakhstan’s Man- If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping
gistau Province bordering the Caspian Sea, while the global LNG sector then please click here for
Tasbulat Oil manages the nearby Tasbulat con- NewsBase’s GLNG Monitor.
cession, which contains the Aktas, Tasbulat and
Turkmenoi deposits. LatAmOil: Venezuelan sanctions
US sanctions continue to dog Venezuela’s oil
If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping industry, which has seen output plummet over
the former Soviet Union’s oil and gas sector then please the last few years.
click here for NewsBase’s FSU Monitor. Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oilfield
service providers, said in late December that it
GLNG: A busy period had reduced the size of its workforce in the South
Various developments took place across the American country. The Houston-based firm has
global LNG industry over Christmas, which is been ramping down its Venezuelan operations
typically a quiet period. These included a signif- for some time, in line with US sanctions policy,
icant LNG asset sale announced in Australia in but it is now trimming staff levels even further.
late December, as well as the start-up of a new As of press time Halliburton had not revealed
import terminal in Croatia. Meanwhile in the the extent of the staff cuts. However, a spokes-
US, the third of three companies proposing to woman told Reuters that the company was not
build a new LNG export terminal at the Port of closing up shop completely.

P16 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 01 06•January•2021