Page 9 - AsianOil Week 04

AsianOil SOUTHEAST ASIA AsianOil
Malaysia’s Reach secures Kazakh production contracts
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
MALAYSIAN oil producer Reach Energy has secured long-awaited production contracts for two fields in western Kazakhstan.
The contracts for the North Kariman and Yes- sen fields came into force on January 1, 2020 and are valid for 16 and 25 years respectively, Reach said in a Malaysian stock filing last week.
“This achievement is significant to Emir- Oil’s master development plan to integrate the Kariman and North Kariman fields as one large hydrocarbon-bearing structure in the near future,” Reach explained. “Yessen has also shown goodproductivityinitswellsfrompastwelltests, and the company plans to exploit this new com- mercial field with best-in-class reservoir man- agement practices.”
North Kariman and Yessen are located within the Emir oil concession, which Reach operates through its 60%-owned subsidiary Emir-Oil. The remaining 40% interest is held by Chinese firm MIE Holdings. North Kariman and Yessen currently flow oil on a trial basis only, but the new contracts will enable them to ramp up to commercial production.
Reach and MIE already produce oil commer- cially from four other Emir oilfields: Dolinnoe, Aksaz, Emir and Kariman.
The Malaysian firm also said it had secured a three-year extension on its exploration contract for the Emir concession, which had expired on January 9.
“This extension consists of eight explora- tion projects that cover the entire explora- tion acreage, and Emir-Oil has strategically selected three low-risk exploration well tar- gets as part of Emir-Oil’s commitment to this extension,”itsaid.“Inaddition,Emir-Oilplans to conduct further seismic reinterpretation that would improve geological understanding of the acreage and further unearth additional prospects for discovery. The company is con- fident that this extension represents a great opportunity to increase the reserves of the company within the next three years.”
Reach announced in late December it had started drilling a fourth well appraising the Yessen field, which should take 120 days to complete. Its three previous wells at the site all struck oil.™
EAST ASIA
China imports record amount of LNG in 2019
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
PetroChina has projected that has demand will expand by 8.6% to 330 bcm in 2020
CHINA’S imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) climbed 12.2% year in year in 2019 to a record high of 60.25mn tonnes in 2019. Imports for the year placed Asia’s largest economy behind Japan in terms of purchases – Japanese imports slid 6.7% y/y to 77.32mn tonnes, according to Gen- eral Administrations of Customs (GAC) data published on January 23. As China’s imports of LNG have surged, pipeline gas imports inched down 0.8% on the year to 36.31mn tonnes.
Domestic production, meanwhile, climbed by 11.5% y/y to 177.7bn cubic metres, accord- ing to data from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
State-run PetroChina, the country’s largest oil and gas producer, has projected that demand will expand by 8.6% to 330 bcm in 2020. The pace of growth is slower than that seen in 2019, when demand grew by 9.4% to 306.7 bcm.
China has directed its energy majors to produce more of the fuel to meet local
demand, which has been stimulated by gov- ernment policies aimed at tackling air pollu- tion. State-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) said earlier this month that it would invest CNY5bn ($725mn) in explora- tion efforts aimed at increasing production to more than 200mn tonnes of oil equivalent (4mn barrels of oil equivalent per day) in 2020, with gas output to account for half of its total output for the first time.
The government has been ramping up efforts in its “war on pollution” since 2013, launching a coal-to-gas switching programme that has seen millions of homes adopt gas-fired heating solutions. While particularly acute in Beijing, pollution levels in the city have fallen dramati- cally in recent years. The capital’s average con- centration of PM2.5 shrank to 42 micrograms per cubic metre in 2019, down 53% from 2013’s 89.5 micrograms, the city’s environment bureau has reported.™
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