Page 10 - AfrOil Week 49

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EurOil: Denmark’s upstream deadline oil industry with a pledge in September to
Denmark will end all new oil and gas exploration become emissions-neutral by 2050. Its commit-
in North Sea under an agreement between Par- ment contrasts with that of Poland, the only EU
liament and the government, as part of a broader state which has not promised to bring its emis-
plan to phase out fossil fuel production by 2050. sions to zero by 2050.
The country’s existing oil and gas platforms,
stationed at 20 fields, will be allowed to continue If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping
extracting fossil fuels. But no new licensing Europe’s oil and gas sector then please click here for
rounds will be held under the agreement. This NewsBase’s EurOil Monitor.
includes a round that was kicked off last year and
attracted bids from France’s Total, Sweden’s Lun- FSU: Rosneft’s tax breaks
din Petroleum, Hungary’s MOL and the UK’s The budget and tax committee of the State
Ardent Oil. Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, has
Many in Danish politics have argued that approved an amendment that exempts projects
continued oil and gas exploration is incompat- on the Taymyr Peninsula from having to pay
ible with the country’s climate goals, which are duty on oil exports.
among the most ambitious in the world. How- The main beneficiary of this amendment is
ever, Denmark may also find itself increasingly Rosneft’s Vostok Oil megaproject, consisting of
dependent on oil and gas imports as a result of a cluster of oilfields on Taymyr estimated to hold
dwindling domestic supply. 6bn tonnes (44bn barrels) in proven, probable
Further north, Norway’s Equinor reported a and possible oil reserves. The company has pro- Denmark will end
second fire at one of its facilities in December 2 jected that the fields could yield some 2mn bar-
in little more than two months. rels per day (bpd) at full capacity. all new oil and
The fire broke out during the afternoon of Rosneft is betting big on Vostok Oil, recently gas exploration in
December 2 at Equinor’s coastal methanol plant announcing it would sell a number of its mar-
in Tjeldbergodden, with no injuries sustained. ginal assets in order to fund the $100bn venture. the North Sea
The state oil firm said it was investigating the These assets are mostly located in southern Rus-
causes and consequences of the incident, as is sia. Analysts have praised Rosneft’s decision to
Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA). sell off some assets to support growth, saying
The Tjeldbergodden plant is the largest it marks a shift in the focus of its management
facility of its kind in Europe, accounting for a from acquisition to optimisation.
quarter of the continent’s methanol production. Meanwhile, Russia has suffered another set-
The incident comes as another investigation is back in its long-running legal dispute with share-
proceeding relating to a fire that broke out at holders of the defunct Russian oil giant Yukos.
Equinor’s Hammerfest LNG terminal in late The Netherlands’ top court ruled on December 4
September. The PSA has said it founded “serious that shareholders could continue pursuing their
breaches” of regulations at the facility. claims against Russia worth $50bn.
Lastly, Poland’s PKN Orlen has unveiled The Permanent Court of Arbitration of The
plans to invest some PLN140bn (€31.4bn) over Hague in 2014 concluded that the Kremlin had
the next decade, shifting its focus from its core staged a co-ordinated attack on Yukos in the
oil refining business to petrochemicals and clean early 2000s in order to bring its assets back under
energies. state control, ordering Russia to pay $50bn in
The state-owned company followed in the compensation to shareholders. Moscow has
footsteps of a number of others in the European been fighting the ruling ever since.

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 49 09•December•2020