Page 13 - DMEA Week 48

DMEA PIPeLInes DMEA
Sudan, South Sudan extend oil agreement until March 2022
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ThE governments of sudan and south sudan have arranged to extend the term of a bilateral agreement on co-operation in the oil and gas sec- tor. e current accord between the parties was due to expire on November 30, 2019. however, Mayen Wol Jong, south sudan’s undersecretary of petroleum, and his sudanese counterpart, hamid suleiman hamid, agreed during a meet- ing in Khartoum last week to push the deadline back to March 2022.
As a result, hamid told the sudanese press, south sudan will continue to be able to export its crude oil via pipeline to Port sudan on the Red sea. e two sides have also reached agree- ment on the operation of the Toma and saluth oil elds and will seek to restart oil production at ar Jath, an oil eld in the Unity region, he said. Additionally, they will move forward with technical work at the second stage of the 5A site, he stated.
Jong, for his part, said that Juba had asked Khartoum for help with the technical proce- dures that must be completed in order to bring ar Jath back on stream. he did not say when the eld might resume production, but he noted
that the equipment needed to execute the project was still on the docks in Port sudan.
e bilateral agreement between sudan and south sudan dates back to 2012. It provides for the former to accept a transit fee of $9.48 per bar- rel for south sudanese oil shipments, and it obli- gates the latter to deliver 28,000 barrels per day (bpd) to sudan for domestic use. Additionally, it obligates south sudan to pay sudan the sum of $3bn by December 31, 2019 as compensation for the loss of income from the development of elds now located in south sudan.
Earlier this year, Juba asked for the deal to be revised because the government would not be able to pay Khartoum the agreed amount by the end of December. It has already paid more than $2.3bn and has suggested raising the pipeline transit fee to $15 per barrel to cover the remain- ing $661mn. however, the sudanese govern- ment has asked for payment in kind.
According to hamid, the parties are due to resume discussions on the matter in early December. Juba and Khartoum may be able to strike a deal on the method of payment during those talks, he said.™
Oil tanker analyst: Iran still exporting 700,000 bpd
mIddLe east
DIGITAL tracking agency Tankertrackers.com has con rmed Iranian state television reports that the country is selling crude despite an out- right ban by the Us.
Numbers on crude oil exports are hard to attain as Iran continues to avoid o cial chan- nels of sales.
This, in turn, forces analysts and tracking rms to watch the ebb and ow of tankers leav- ing Iran’s ports and track their movement.
TankerTrackers.com noted that the cur- rent reports by Iran were likely to be true and were not rhetoric by an embattled Rouhani administration.
“Lately, Iran’s two main destinations for its crude oil has been China and syria. In addition to that, re ned products bounce via certain trad- ing hubs as they cannot be chemically traced,” samir Madani CEO of Tankertrackers.com told Downstream MEA (DMEA) on December 2.
“Recently, we have also seen a small amount of heavy crude do the same and is most likely to be blended ahead of re-export. All in all, crude plus products are being shipped at a rate of around 700,000 barrels per day,” he added.
Iranian Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri made a statement on December 2 that he and his gov- ernment were continuing to sell oil despite a Us export ban on the product, IRIB reported him as saying.
“Despite America’s pressure ... and its imposed sanctions on our oil exports, we still continue to sell our oil by using other means ... when even friendly countries have stopped pur- chasing our crude fearing America’s penalties,” Jahangiri said.
e Us meanwhile has said on several occa- sions that they had managed to completely stop the export and re-export of oil and petrochemi- cal shipments out of the country.™
termInaLs & shIPPInG
Week 48 05•December•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P13