Page 11 - AfrOil Week 07 2022

AfrOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES AfrOil

ATC said that the agreement would “pave Kalundborg Refinery in Denmark.
the way” for it to acquire products including The agreement follows Klesch’s late 2021
polymers, olefins, and liquid refined and pet- acquisition of Equinor Refining in Denmark,
rochemical products. The facility will have a whose assets include the refinery, terminals in
liquid-to-chemical conversion rate of around Zealand and near Copenhagen and associated
60-70%, in line with parent firm Saudi Aram- infrastructure.
co’s “strategy to maximise liquid-to-chemical ATC noted that the deal would provide
conversion,” ATC chairman Mohammed Al “opportunity for Arabian crude placement and
Qahtani noted. third-party crude and condensate”, adding, as
Red Sea and SCZone announced a deal for with the Red Sea deal, it included a provision for
financing the facility’s development in April refined products offtake.
2021, noting at the time that products would The trader has been ramping up operations
also include polyethylene, polypropylene, pol- over the past year and in December, signed a
yester and bunker fuel. non-binding agreement with Oman’s OQ to
Worley was awarded a contract covering the explore the potential for providing feedstock
project management consultancy (PMC) ser- for Sultanate’s new 230,000-bpd Duqm refinery
vices for the early front-end engineering design and the nearby petchem complex and store oil
(pre-FEED), FEED, and the detailed engineer- at a new facility nearby. These deals, alongside
ing, procurement and construction (EPC) a deal by ATC’s parent to acquire refining and
phases of the project. fuel distribution facilities in Poland and recent
In January, ATC signed an agreement with overtures to do the same in Oman, China and
Germany’s Klesch Group for the exclusive sup- India, highlight Aramco’s energetic resumption
ply of 110,000 bpd of crude oil feedstock for its of its downstream expansion strategy. ™

Report: Shell may have started appraisal

drilling at Graff oilfield offshore Namibia

NAMIBIA SHELL (UK) was reportedly slated to begin
drilling an appraisal well at Graff, a newly dis-
covered oilfield at the PEL 39 licence area off-
shore Namibia, on February 15, informed
sources have told Upstream.
As of press time, it could not be confirmed
whether drilling was indeed underway. How-
ever, Upstream’s sources said that Shell was just
a few hours away from spudding the new well,
which will help confirm the size of the new find,
with the Valaris DS 10 drillship.
The sources also emphasised the fact that
only a short amount of time has passed since
Shell announced the discovery at its Graff-1
exploration well within a site known as Block
2913A. This is an indication that the new find
may be quite substantial, they said.
Upstream also cited marine tracking data Graff-1 was drilled at the PEL 39 licence area (Image: NAMCOR)
from the VesselsValue site, saying that the drill-
ship now appeared to be within Block 2914, at a Even so, other observers have made their own
site 8 km northeast of the Graff-1 well. estimates, saying that early analyses put the new
If the Graff-2 appraisal well is drilled there, a reserves at 250mn-300mn barrels of oil equiva-
source in the upstream exploration sector said, lent (boe).
the distance between the two sites may indicate Earlier this month, the Wood Mackenzie
that the Graff structure is very large indeed consultancy put forth an even higher number,
– large enough, perhaps, to hold as much as saying in a briefing note to clients that PEL 39
400mn barrels of crude. might contain enough oil to qualify as a giant
Thus far, neither Shell nor its partners in the field. “We understand the well met its pre-drill
project, QatarEnergy and National Petroleum estimate of between 500mn and 1bn barrels,” the
Corp. of Namibia (NAMCOR), have spoken note said. “We assume 700mn barrels is recov-
publicly about the size of the Graff discovery. erable.” ™

Week 07 16•February•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P11