Page 9 - MEOG Week 34

MEOG PROJECTS & COMPANIES MEOG

Aramco adds new division amid reshuffle

SAUDI ARABIA SAUDI Aramco has announced the establish- (bpd), then capital expenditure for 2020 and the
ment of a Corporate Development division that remainder of its three-year business plan period.
will be tasked with asset oversight and improving With the Upstream division likely to have
access to growth markets and technologies. been the source of the majority of the compa-
The new division will be headed by former ny’s $10-12bn CAPEX reduction, al-Naimi will
senior vice-president of Downstream Abdulaziz face intense scrutiny on spending, with projects
al-Gudaimi and will begin operations on Sep- including the crude increment programmes
tember 13. Former Upstream SVP Mohammed for Berri and Marjan having already been
al-Qahtani will replace Al-Gudaimi in Down- postponed.
stream, while Nasir al-Naimi, current VP of During al-Gudaimi’s reign in Downstream,
Petroleum Engineering, is understood to have the company embarked on an ambitious pro-
been made interim SVP of Upstream. The move gramme to more than double its global refin-
puts al-Naimi at the head of the most profitable ing footprint to 8-10mn bpd, while acquiring a
division of the world’s second most valuable majority share in chemicals specialist SABIC to
listed company. become one of the world’s largest petrochemical
Aramco has been in a state of flux over the suppliers.
last year, having been firmly on an upward tra- However, the downstream business has
jectory following its world-record initial public consistently made losses and Middle East Oil &
offering (IPO) in December and plans for expan- Gas (MEOG) understands from sources at Ara-
sion across the up- and downstream, only to face mco that there has been talk of spinning off the
the Ministry of Energy’s direction to carry out an Downstream and Corporate sides of the com-
oil price war with Russia, then the impact of the pany to allow the Upstream cash cow to flour-
coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The sum of ish. Restructuring has been an ongoing process
these parts resulted in the company slashing first this year, with Downstream having already been
production in Q2 by nearly 5mn barrels per day streamlined in mid-July.™

Has Erdogan discovered

more reserves or hot air?

TURKEY NO one can accuse Turkish President Recep agencies the day before, the executive president
Tayyip Erdogan of underselling Turkey’s gas find was able to declare in a televised address from
in the Black Sea. an Ottoman palace in Istanbul that “Turkey has
The wily monocrat built up expectations and realised the biggest natural gas find of its his-
suspense by last week promising that he would tory in the Black Sea” and rejoice: “My Lord has
announce some “good news” that would change opened the door to unprecedented wealth for
the country’s destiny. Of course, as wags were us.”
quick to point out on social media, the subtext to A source had been quoted by Reuters as say-
all this is that the Turkish lira, and by extension ing: “There is a natural gas finding in the Tuna-1
Turkey’s economy, are in deep crap on the mar- well. The expected reserve is 26tcf [800bcm],
kets and Erdogan’s lickspittle officials are now and it meets approximately 20 years of Turkey’s
working overtime to deliver some good news needs.”
every week to distract the naysayers and avoid Meanwhile, Thomas Purdie, an Upstream
an irreversible slide into the mire. Erdogan, they analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said: “Even if the
implied, had also discovered new reserves of hot official 320bcm figure given by Erdogan when
air. he announced the discovery is treated as an esti-
But the master rhetorician worked the gas mate of gas in place, this is Turkey’s biggest-ever
discovery hard. Though the size of the identi- find – by a wide margin – and one of the largest
fied reserves – 11.3trn cubic feet (320bn cubic global discoveries of 2020.
metres), relatively small compared with other He added: “However, no matter the political
major gas fields – turned out to be somewhat and economic importance, reaping the sup-
more modest than expected from briefings ply rewards will be complex and a 2023 date
given by supposedly informed sources to news for bringing the discovery – renamed Sakarya

Week 34 26•August•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P9