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It did say, though, that the additional services soon to be available in Cartagena would include cooling down conventional LNG tankers, as well as reloading small-sized LNG cargoes for the purpose of distribution to other destina- tions in the Caribbean and Latin America.
Jose Castro, the general manager of SPEC LNG, said his company saw the deal as a means of expanding its operations in the region. “Due to SPEC´s strategic location and capabilities, this collaborative agreement will enable us to play a key role in the development of the LNG industry in Latin America and the Caribbean, including small-scale LNG,” he said.
The Hoegh Grace vessel is capable of regas- ifying LNG at the rate of 500mn cubic feet
(14.16mn cubic metres) per day and trans- porting 170,000 cubic metres of LNG. It is con- nected to SPEC LNG’s import facility, which includes at jetty that can handle LNG tankers, along with onshore infrastructure and a 9.2-km onshore pipeline that serves as a link to Colom- bia’s natural gas pipeline grid.
SPEC LNG signed a 20-year agreement to use the Hoegh Grace FSRU in 2016. The con- tract includes options that allow the Colombian company to reduce the term of the charter to 15, 10 or five years.
The Colombian company is currently deliv- ering gas to three local thermal power plant (TPP) operators under long-term supply agree- ments. ™
BRAZIL
Long-time emerging markets investor bullish on Brazilian oil industry
MARK Mobius, the veteran investor in emerg- ing markets and founder of the Mobius Capital Partners fund, has suggested that last weekend’s aerial attacks on oil infrastructure in Saudi Ara- bia may benefit Brazil in the long term.
Speaking to CNBC on September 18, Mobius noted that events in Saudi Arabia had not gen- erated large amount of negative sentiment in Brazil and other emerging markets. This may be an indication that the South American country and other Latin American crude oil producers are confident of their ability to weather any sup- ply disruptions that might stem from problems in the Middle East, he said.
He indicated that other market players appeared to be intrigued by this show of con- fidence. “I think people are beginning to think, well, maybe we should be looking to Brazil, for example, for their oil supply, to Mexico, to other countries in terms of where oil can come from,” he told CNBC. “If you look at the reserves that Brazil has, you’ll see that they can produce quite a lot of oil.”
Brazil in particular has reason to hope that its plan to increase crude output substantially will succeed, Mobius added. The Brazilian govern- ment is “really moving forward” with the types of reform that will help attract foreign invest- ment in oil projects, he said.
Fuel prices
In related news, Brazil’s national oil company (NOC) Petrobras claimed earlier in the week that it had not raised motor fuel prices in response to the attacks on Saudi Arabia. It was responding to reports from the FC Stone con- sultancy, which claimed several days ago that the NOC had hiked diesel prices by 3.8% and
gasoline prices by 2.29%.
According to Reuters, Petrobras declared
on September 16 that it would not make any immediate changes in its pricing policy in the wake of unmanned drone attacks on the Abqaiq oil-processing facility and the Khurais oilfield in Saudi Arabia. Instead, it said it intended to wait to assess the impact on world fuel markets.
Nevertheless, Reuters reported on Septem- ber 18 that Petrobras had raised motor fuel prices after all. It quoted an unnamed repre- sentative of the NOC as saying that refinery gate prices for gasoline had been raised by 3.5% and for diesel by 4.2%. ™
Mark Mobius is bullish on Brazil’s oil sector (Photo: Franklin Templeton)
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 37 19•September•2019