Page 8 - Euroil Week 35 2019

EurOil PIPELINES & TRANSPORT EurOil
Carlyle, Transgaz agree on building pipe for Black Sea find
ROMANIA
Midia Gas will be the rst Romanian offshore gas project to be developed after 1989.
BLACK Sea Oil & Gas (BSOG) decided together with the Romanian natural gas trans- port system operator Transgaz to start building the infrastructure needed to transfer gas from the Midia o shore project to the national gas transport system, Economica.net reported on August 30.
e Midia Gas Development (MGD) project is the rst new o shore gas development project in the Romanian Black Sea to be built a er 1989.
BSOG’s shareholders, led by US investment fund Carlyle International Energy Partners, decided on February 7 to proceed with the $400mn Midia Gas Development Project, in the Romanian part of the Black Sea.
BSOG — which is controlled by Carlyle and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) — together with its co-venture partners, Petro Ventures Resources and Gas Plus International B.V., announced on April 15 that they have received approval from the Romanian government for the development of the Ana and Doina natural gas elds which
make up the MGD Project.
The companies discovered the two fields
holding an estimated 10bn cubic metres (cm) of gas in 2008, 120 kilometres o shore in the Black Sea.
BSOG expects to start natural gas production in the Black Sea in the rst quarter of 2021.
e MGD Project consists of drilling ve pro- duction wells (one probe on the Doina deposit and four probes on the Ana deposit), and a sub- marine production unit on the Doina deposit which will be connected through an 18 km pipeline to the automated production platform located on Ana deposit. A 121km underwater pipeline with a capacity of 1bn cubic metres (bcm) per year representing 10% of Romania’s consumption will transport the natural gas from the Ana platform to the shore, where a 4.1km underground pipeline will bring it to the new gas treatment station.
In its turn, Transgaz has to build a 24km pipeline to bring the natural gas to the existing national transport system.™
POLICY
Turkey hikes gas prices again
TURKEY
The hikes will push up in ation and hit companies already suffering from weak demand.
TURKEY’S state-run pipeline company BOTAS hiked natural gas prices by 14.97% for residential and industrial users as of September 1.
The hike comes on top of a similar price increase already put into effect in August. BOTAS on August 1 increased the gas price by 14.97% for residential users and 13.73% for industrial users.
e price hikes will push up in ation and hit companies already su ering from weak domes- tic demand. It will be di cult for companies to pass on the higher on to consumers. Observers say the government was forced to increase gas prices to plug the swelling budget de cit.
e government has taken this very unpop- ular measure just ahead of the winter surge in people using natural gas for heating. Households in Turkey spend a considerable chunk of their budget on natural gas.
Erdal Bahcivan, head of the Istanbul Cham- ber of Industry, called on the government to reconsider the price hike.
“We are aware that the natural gas prices need to be adjusted depending on developments in the international markets. However, the latest hike did not allow us some time to make necessary
preparations and once again caught us o guard,” Bahcivan said in a statement.
Natural gas price’s weight in the in ation bas- ket is 1.8%.
e annual in ation rate steadily eased to 15.7% in June from 20.25% in January. But in July, consumer prices increased 16.65% on an annual basis. Annual inflation is expected to decline in the next couple of months thanks to a strong base e ect. In September and October 2018, the annual inflation rates were 24.52% and 25.24%, respectively. It is likely that the base e ect encouraged the government to go ahead with the unpopular gas price rises as o cials can see some room for them because of it.™
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Week 35 05•September•2019