Page 12 - EurOil Week 10 2021

EurOil PIPELINES & TRANSPORT EurOil

Hoegh LNG to go private

NORWAY NORWEGIAN shipowner Leif Hoegh & Co. & Power Infrastructure (GEPIF) to acquire all
revealed on March 8 it had teamed up with Mor- publicly held shares in LNG carrier GasLog in
Leif Hoegh and Morgan gan Stanley Infrastructure Partners to take Nor- February.
Stanley have formed way-based FSRU provider Hoegh LNG private. The shipping industry is poised for consol-
a 50:50 joint venture, Leif Hoegh and Morgan Stanley have formed idation following a collapse in world trade last
Larus Holding, to buy a 50:50 joint venture, Larus Holding, to buy the year as a result of the pandemic. LNG trade
the remaining 50.4% remaining 50.4% interest in Hoegh LNG, whose was particularly badly affected, with reduced
interest in Hoegh LNG. board has recommended that shareholders import demand causing shipping day rates to
approve the offer. The deal will need the backing plummet.
of two thirds of Hoegh LNG shareholders to go Hoegh LNG has a fleet of 10 FSRUs and two
ahead. LNG carriers, and recently launched a new clean
Key shareholder and bondholder meetings energy business to focus on supplying green
are scheduled to take place in March, and Leif hydrogen and ammonia. It is also exploring
Hoegh and Morgan Stanley hope to close the options to develop floating carbon, capture and
deal in the first half of the year. They will aban- storage (CCS) solutions.
don the deal if it has not moved forward by The company held an initial public offering
August 9. (IPO) in 2011 that generated $132mn. Its share
The offer represents a 36% premium to price peaked in 2015 at €14.45 ($17.10) in 2015,
Hoegh LNG’s trading price on March and a but is currently at only €2.38, highlighting the
32% premium to the 30-day average, valuing the pandemic’s impact on its investment case. The
company at a total of NOK1.82bn ($211mn). It remaining 49.6% stake in the company is already
follows a move by BlackRock’s Global Energy held by Leif Hoegh. ™
POLICY

Israel, Cyprus eye Aphrodite resolution

EAST MED ISRAEL and Cyprus have taken an initial step Aphrodite-Yishai natural gas reservoir.”
towards settling a decade-old dispute over a The Israeli minister said he thought there was
At stake is a 10% major gas field that has held back development. a “fair chance” of an eventual resolution.
share of the gas field’s The Aphrodite gas field, estimated to be “Nothing is certain, but there is a good
resources. 116bn cubic metres in size, was discovered in chance that this might lead us to a solution of
Cypriot waters in 2011, and authorities awarded this little but significant obstacle in the wonder-
a 25-year production-sharing agreement (PSA) ful relations and co-operation between Cyprus
in mid-2019 to Royal Dutch Shell, Delek and and Israel on energy and on many other issues,”
Noble Energy, now part of Chevron, to develop he was quoted as saying by the Cyprus News
it. However, a portion of the field stretches into Agency.
Israeli waters, specifically within the Tehran-is- Cyprus and Israel are growing increasingly
sued Yishai licence, where a group of Israeli eager to get over the dispute in order to focus on
operators are working. joint regional infrastructure initiatives. Cyprus,
At stake is a 10% share of the field’s resources, Israel and Greece signed an accord on March 9
and Israel has warned the Aphrodite partners on developing a subsea power cable that would
not to move forward with development until the run under the Mediterranean and connect all
matter is settled. three countries’ electricity grids.
In what could signal a breakthrough, Cypriot Cyprus and Israel are also working together
Energy Minister Natasa Pilides and her Israeli on the EastMed gas project, which aims to lay
counterpart, Yuval Steinitz, agreed on a frame- a 10 bcm per year gas pipe from the Levant
work for resolving the issue during a meeting on basin off Israel and Cyprus to Southeast Europe,
March 9. stretching nearly 2,000 km. The two countries,
“The framework will be set out in a joint letter together with Greece and Italy, signed an inter-
which is being prepared,” Pilides said in a state- governmental agreement on the $6-7bn project’s
ment on social media. “We are both very satis- implementation in January 2020, but an invest-
fied we are now at this point after nine years of ment decision is still pending.
discussion.” EastMed would carry gas from several large-
Steinitz added that “thanks to the relation- sized Israeli fields but also potentially from Aph-
ship of trust created between the governments rodite, although an LNG option is also under
of Israel and Cyprus, we have reached an consideration for the Cypriot project. Cyprus
agreement that will bring us closer after more has expressed hope that Aphrodite will see first
than 10 years to resolving the dispute over the gas by 2025. ™

P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 10 11•March•2021