Page 11 - EurOil Week 18 2021

EurOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES EurOil

Wintershall terminates

West Mira rig contract

NORWAY GERMANY’S Wintershall has terminated the in production licence PL 418, under a contract
contract for the West Mira semi-submersible signed in 2018.
drilling rig in the Norwegian North Sea. Seadrill, Wintershall Norge operates Nova with a 35%
which manages the rig, announced on May 5 that interest. The other partners are Capricorn Norge
it had received the termination notice. – part of Cairn Energy – and Spirit Energy with
This comes after a period of extended down- 20% stakes each, Edison Norge with 15% and
time owing to an equipment failure reported in DEA Norge with 10%.
March on the Nova field. The equipment failure Wintershall said in its first-quarter earn-
occurred while production equipment was being ings call last week that it continued to progress
lowered to the well location. This resulted in the Nova – along with the Dvalin and Njord projects
production equipment falling to the seabed. offshore Norway – and anticipated production
Seadrill said it had been “working diligently” from these fields in the second half of 2022. News
with Wintershall and the rig’s owner, Northern of the West Mira cancellation only emerged
Ocean, to prepare the West Mira for a return to around a week later, and Nova was not discussed
work prior to receiving the termination notice. further on the earnings call.
The company said it would now review the More broadly, the company reported positive
notice, adding that it intended to continue its results last week, saying its output had reached a
“constructive engagement” with both Winter- record 659,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day
shall and Northern Ocean. in the first quarter of the year. This puts Winter-
The West Mira rig had been set to drill a total shall on track to achieve its full-year guidance of
of six wells at the Nova field, which is located 620,000-640,000 boepd.™
ENERGY TRANSITION

Cheniere delivers carbon-

neutral LNG cargo to Europe

US-EUROPE US LNG producer Cheniere Energy said this “It is great to see more producers offsetting
week that it had supplied a carbon-neutral cargo their GHG emissions to meet the increasing
of LNG to Royal Dutch Shell under the two com- demand for carbon-neutral LNG,” stated Shell
panies’ long-term sales and purchase agreement Energy’s executive vice-president, Steve Hill.
(SPA). The cargo came from Cheniere’s Sabine “Using high quality nature-based offsets to com-
Pass LNG terminal in Louisiana and was deliv- pensate for emissions that cannot be avoided or
ered to an unspecified location in Europe in early reduced is an important step as we find more
April. ways to reduce emissions across the LNG value
According to Cheniere’s statement, offsets chain.”
used for the cargo were bought from Shell’s The announcement about the cargo came
global portfolio of nature-based projects. on the same day that Cheniere published its
Cheniere purchased the portion of offsets attrib- results for the first quarter of 2021. The company
utable to estimated carbon dioxide equivalent reported net income of $393mn for the quarter,
(CO2e) emissions associated with activities such up 5% from $375mn in the same quarter of 2020.
as the production and liquefaction of the cargo. The company exported 133 cargoes in the latest
The news comes after Cheniere announced quarter, up from 128 a year ago and 130 in the
earlier this year that it would provide its LNG fourth quarter of 2020.
customers with greenhouse gas (GHG) emis- On the company’s earnings call, Cheniere’s
sions data associated with each cargo produced president and CEO, Jack Fusco, noted that Win-
at its liquefaction facilities, beginning in the first ter Storm Uri, which hit much of the US in Feb-
half of 2022. ruary, had a particularly significant impact on
Shell, for its part, is one of the early movers Texas. Cheniere’s Corpus Christi LNG plant, on
in carbon-neutral LNG, and has also delivered a the Texas Gulf Coast, went offline for a few days
handful of such cargoes itself, primarily to Asian as a result of the storm and the power outages
buyers, since 2019. it caused.™

Week 18 06•May•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P11