Page 14 - AsianOil Week 50 2020

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The investors in the
The plan for the export terminal has also been Petronas (Malaysia) and ExxonMobil (US) Karachaganak gas field
in the spotlight because it involves transporting revealed last week that they had discovered have spent the last five
LNG by truck or rail from shale plays in the hydrocarbons in Sloanea-1, an exploration well years in a dispute with
US Northeast – with the administration of US drilled at Block 51 offshore Suriname. In a state- the Kazakh government
President Donald Trump only recently allowing ment, Petronas said the partners had “encoun- over how profits from
LNG-by-rail shipments. tered several hydrocarbon-bearing sandstone production are shared.
Elsewhere in the world, there have been dis- packages with good reservoir qualities in the
ruptions to LNG supply. In Algeria, the port Campanian section” of the well.
of Arzew, which is home to an LNG complex, Neither company has commented on the size
had been at a standstill for about 10 days as of of the find, but Petronas stated that the partners’
December 11 owing to bad weather, according next step would be to evaluate the data collected
to a source cited by Bloomberg. This comes as during drilling. It also commented that the “well
unplanned maintenance at other liquefaction data proves excellent calibration of the hydrocar-
plants around the world has helped eat into bon potential of the block.”
the global oversupply of LNG, pushing up spot In other news, members of Brazil’s Senate have
prices to their highest level in around two years. voted to approve the basic text of a bill designed to
And in longer-term challenges for the indus- enable the further reform of the country’s natural
try, consultancy Wood Mackenzie published a gas sector. The legislation has already passed in
new report last week, showing that a “2-degree the lower house of the National Assembly, which
scenario” – involving global warming being lim- approved it in September.
ited to 2 degrees Celsius – would put around 77% The Brazilian gas industry has long been
of new LNG supply at risk. under the exclusive control of Petrobras, the
The consultancy said low-cost supplies from national oil company (NOC). But the new
Russia and Qatar would be best positioned to bill aims to make room for private investors,
fill the supply gap under this scenario, while low partly by limiting vertical integration (that
Henry Hub prices would also mean competitive is, by barring gas producers from acting as
US LNG projects. However, it added that this distributors and vice versa). It also swaps the
scenario would raise questions over the need for existing concession regime for gas distribu-
other new liquefaction projects elsewhere. tion for a system of authorisations that will
be overseen by the National Agency of Petro-
If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping leum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP). Gov-
the global LNG sector then please click here for ernment officials hope the latter measure will
NewsBase’s GLNG Monitor. help eliminate some bureaucratic hurdles to
the construction of new gas pipelines.
LatAmOil: New find offshore Suriname
The Guyana-Suriname basin continues to arouse If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping
interest, following the announcement of another the Latin American oil and gas sector then please click
offshore discovery. here for NewsBase’s LatAmOil Monitor.

P14 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 50 17•December•2020