Page 8 - MEOG Week 25
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MEOG FInanCe & InVestment MEOG
PTTEP acquires Gulbenkian shares in Partex
oman/uae
THAIlAnD’S state upstream operator PTTEP last week announced that it was acquiring 100% of Portugal-based Partex Holding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for around US$622 million.
The move will give PTTEP a 2% stake in Muscat-backed Petroleum Development oman (PDo) and a 1% share of the country’s Muka- hizna project in Block 53, which is operated by occidental Petroleum (oxy).
It adds around 16,000 bpd of crude sales as well as 2P reserves of around 65 million barrels of oil equivalent to PTTEP’s books, with the majority of these located in oman. Partex also operates Brazil’s Potiguar eld (50%) and holds stakes in Kazakhstan’s Dunga eld (20%) and Angola’s Block 17/06 (2.5%).
In the midstream, the rm has 2% stakes in both oman lnG and ADnoC Gas Processing. e move follows PTTEP’s maiden foray into the region in January, which came by way of Abu Dhabi’s Supreme Petroleum Council approving the award of o shore 1 and o shore 2 to a con-
sortium of the ai rm and Italy’s Eni.
e two rms committed to investing at least US$230 million to explore and appraise block 1
and appraise existing discoveries in block 2, with the two concessions covering a total of around 8,000 square km.
e exploration phase will last for a maxi- mum of nine years, a er which the concession could be extended to 35 years for development and production. ADnoC has the customary option to take a 60% stake in the event of a com- mercial discovery. In the meantime, Eni will hold the 70% majority stake and operating role.
Partex has long punched above its weight, working alongside ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, ADnoC, oxy, India oil Corp., Petrobras and Sonangol among others, and was part of the Abu Dhabi Company for onshore operations (ADCo, now ADnoC onshore), until the 75-year concession expired in 2014.
It was not included in the reshaped ADnoC onshore despite having sought to take a stake in the new joint venture.
At the time, senior executive Fernando Alves told MEOG that while Partex’s “size was not at all adequate for these sorts of terms of negotiation ... Partex’s objective [was] to have a participa- tion while remaining as active as we always have been,”headded.
Iran reports Energy Exchange success
Iran
IRAn’S spot energy market has reported strong performance over the past month.
As the sanctions noose tightens around the Iranian economy, the Iranian Energy Exchange (IREnEx) has been relied upon as a conduit for the sale of hydrocarbons and products.
IREnEx CEo Ali Hosseini said this week that more than 183,000 tonnes of hydrocarbon products were traded on the platform during the Iranian calendar month ending June 20. He added that the value of these trades was 10 tril- lion rials (US$74.34 million).
However, while the headline number sug- gests continued demand for Iranian products, Hosseini noted that more than US$44 million of this gure was traded domestically, with just 63,000 tonnes of products worth 3.5 trillion rials (US$26.54 million) traded internationally dur- ing the period.
Earlier this month, the national Iranian oil Co. (nIoC) o ered another batch of 2 million barrels of light crude via the exchange, the third such o ering in the current Iranian calendar year, which began on March 21.
Tehran has been experimenting with selling crude over the exchange in response to the US ramping up pressure on Iranian oil customers to reduce shipments. It has held 10 o erings of light crude on IREnEx since october 28 last year as it tries to provide a variety of sales mech- anisms to appeal to buyers. Meanwhile, despite the best intentions of the remaining signatories to the JCPoA – the EU, the UK, France, Ger- many, China and Russia – trade with Iran has collapsed under pressure from US sanctions and heightened tensions. e Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (InSTEx) special purpose vehicle (SPC) was set up to allow European busi- nesses to trade with Iran without fear of sanction. However, Central Bank of Iran (CBI) governor Abdolanser Hemmati said in a televised inter- view on June 22 that he did not “believe that InSTEx will work miracles”.
He said: “Monetary transactions should be done via [InSTEx] and for that Europeans should purchase our oil or open credit lines for Iran”, adding “I am not pessimist[ic] about Euro- peans but we do not wait for them”.
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 25 25•June•2019
