Page 13 - DMEA Week 28 2020

DMEA POLICY DMEA
Unaoil managers convicted for Iraq graft
IRAQ
In 2016, Fairfax Media exposed Unaoil’s industrial-scale corruption
A court in the UK has convicted two former managers of Monaco-based consultancy Unaoil of bribing o cials in Iraq to win oil deals in the early 2000s.
A jury found British-Lebanese Ziad Akle, the company’s former Iraq manager, and Stephen Whiteley, a British former manager for Iraq, Kazakhstan and Angola, guilty following 19 days of deliberations.
However, the jury did not reach a verdict in the case against Paul Bond, who was once the Middle East sales manager for SBM O shore. e UK’s Serious Fraud O ce (SFO) said that it would apply for a retrial.
In 2016, Fairfax Media exposed Unaoil’s industrial-scale corruption. Examination of tens of thousands of emails suggests that the consul- tancy channelled huge bribes to government o - cials on behalf of its clients to help win billions of dollars worth of government contracts across a number of hydrocarbons-producing countries, including Iraq, Iran and Libya.
Looking particularly at Iraq, the accusations are that the company and its country manager, Basil Al Jarah, arranged enormous bribes for clients, including Rolls-Royce, Petrofac, Clyde
Pumps, Weatherford, Cameron/Natco, FMC Technologies, Saipem, SBM Offshore, MAN Turbo, Rosetti Marino, ABB, e Shaw Group, Core Labs, Leighton O shore, Weir and Hyun- dai, plus some major IOCs.
Amongst the Iraqi public o cials allegedly implicated include Hussain al-Shahristani, Abdul Kareem al-Luaibi (another former Petro- leum Minister), Kifah Numan (director-gen- eral of the South Oil Co., SOC), and Dhia Ja ar (another director-general of SOC and Deputy Petroleum Minister).
Some of the key projects in which bribery allegedly played a major part include the devel- opment of some of Iraq’s biggest oil elds, includ- ing Zubair and Gharraf.
At the time, the revelations that relatively moderate gures in Iraq’s current political struc- ture – most notably, former Petroleum Minister and current Minister for Education, Hussain al-Shahristani, who was also a leader in Iraq’s rul- ing National Alliance coalition – have long been involved in extensive corrupt practices served to undermine Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s credibility in portraying himself as an anti-cor- ruption gure.™
TRANSPORT
Golar LNG’s FLNG vessel loads 40th cargo offshore Cameroon
CAMEROON
The Hilli Episeyo FLNG has already turned
out more than 2.5mn tonnes of LNG.
BERMUDA-BASED Golar LNG has reported that the Hilli Episeyo, the rst vessel in the world to be converted to a oating LNG (FLNG) unit, has reached the milestone of li ing its 40th cargo o shore Cameroon.
According to the company, the FLNG n- ished loading its latest cargo on June 18. e shipment went to Russia’s Gazprom, which is the off-taker of LNG from the facility under an eight-year agreement that is due to expire in 2026.
e Hilli Episeyo was converted to liquefy gas from the Sanaga eld, which is being developed by Perenco (UK/France) and Société Nation- ale des Hydrocarbures (SNH), the national oil company (NOC) of Cameroon. e partners send gas from the eld to an onshore treatment facility for processing before delivering it to the FLNG unit.
e vessel began producing LNG in May 2018 and has been turning out 1.2mn tonnes per year (tpy) from one of its two produc- tion trains. To date, it has maintained 100%
up-time and has produced more than 2.5mn tonnes of LNG. It has loaded 11 of its 40 car- goes onto tankers owned by Golar LNG – namely, the Golar Maria, the Golar Viking and the Nanook.
e vessel could eventually see output double to 2.4mn tpy, as Golar LNG has held talks with Perenco and SNH on the possibility of activating the Hilli Episeyo’s second production train. is is not likely to happen in the near future, though, as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has reduced global fuel demand.
e FLNG is operating under a tolling agree- ment. It generates about $40mn per quarter in tolling revenues, with Golar LNG receiving 50% of the total and its NASDAQ-listed a liate Golar LNG Partners receiving the other 50%, in line with the terms of a drop-down deal nalised in 2018.
e Hilli Episeyo began its life as one of Golar LNG’s 125,000-cubic metre tankers. It was con- verted to an FLNG unit at the Keppel shipyards in Singapore at a cost of $1.2bn.™
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