Page 18 - AsianOil Week 42

AsianOil NRG AsianOil

six independent directors to its board, including expansion plans will weigh down on invest-
one representative of the federal government as a ment approvals on other liquefaction for years
whole and one representative for each of the coun- to come.
try’s five individual states. Meanwhile, a report by the Arab Petroleum
Meanwhile, the World Bank has offered Sudan’s Investment Corp. (APICORP) said that there
transitional government a grant of $200mn to sup- were some $95bn petrochemicals projects
port efforts to reform the economy, including the planned in the Middle East and North Africa in
energy sector. The reform agenda includes liberal- 2020-2024, up $4bn from its last five-year out-
isation measures that will tie domestic fuel prices look a year ago.
to world market levels. The grant will be supple- Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia account for
mented with another $200mn from Sudan’s part- the bulk of these ventures. Developers will have
ner states, working through the Sudan Transition difficulty delivering on these investments, how-
Support Trust. ever, given weak market conditions and a lack of
established petrochemical infrastructure in the
If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping region.
Africa’s oil and gas sector then please click here for
NewsBase’s AfrOil Monitor. If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping
the downstream sector of Africa and the Middle East,
DMEA: Qatar begins LNG buyers’ push then please click here for NewsBase’s DMEA Monitor.
Qatar has embarked on a push to find more buy-
ers for its LNG, striking a deal last week to secure Europe: UK prospects grow bleaker
25 years of storage and redelivery capacity at the Hydrocarbon production on the UK Conti-
UK’s Grain LNG terminal starting in mid-2025. nental Shelf (UKCS) is unlikely to exceed 2mn
National gas exporter Qatar Petroleum (QP) barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) again,
said its affiliate would subscribe to up to 7.2mn Oslo-based Rystad Energy said in research pub-
tonnes per year (tpy) of capacity at the site. lished on October 15, after lowering its forecasts
Grain LNG, situated on the Isle of Grain off to factor in a downgrade at Hurricane Energy’s
Kent, is able to store and supply enough gas to Lancaster field.
meet at least 25% of UK gas demand. QP is also a Rystad had expected national output to
67.5% shareholder in another UK LNG terminal rebound to 2.1mn boepd by 2035, up from
at South Hook. 1.65mn boepd last year. But setbacks at Lancas-
QP’s capacity reservation comes as it embarks ter, the first fractured basement field to reach
on a major expansion project at the offshore production, have prompted the consultancy to
North Field, the source of the country’s LNG. rethink its assumptions.
The first phase, North Field East (NFE), will raise Hurricane slashed its estimate last month for
output from the current 77mn tpy to 110mn tpy how much oil could be recovered from Lancaster
by 2025, while the second, North Field South to 16mn barrels, from 37.3mn barrels previously,
(NFS), will expand it to 126mn tpy by the late after discovering that the field was more com-
2020s. Qatar, already the world’s biggest LNG plex than earlier thought. Fractured basement
producer, has said it may pursue additional resources were expected to account for almost
expansion phases at a later stage. one fifth of future national output, according to
A record $65bn of final investment decisions Rystad.
(FIDs) were taken on LNG export projects glob- The consultancy now predicts UK produc-
ally last year, but the number still sits at zero for tion to max out at only 1.7mn boepd in 2035 and
2020, as a result of market uncertainty. Qatar’s wind down to next to nothing by mid-century.

P18 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 42 22•October•2020