Page 14 - EurOil 32

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NEWS IN BRIEF
EurOil
President Rumen Radev announced early parliamentary elections and appointed a caretaker government that started working on August 2.
Ivan Topchiysky, chairman of the board of directors of Bulgarian gas distribution company Bulgargaz, said in August that the company continued negotiations with Gazprom and that it was possible to restart supplies of Russian gas to Bulgaria.
Russia resumes oil supplies to Slovakia and Hungary but imports to Czechia remain halted
The Druzhba [Friendship] pipeline is resuming the transfer of oil to Slovakia and Hungary following MOL Group’s payment to Ukraine for the Russian oil transit. However, imports are still halted to Czechia, local media report, after Russian oil company Transneft cut the oil flow westwards, blaming sanctions for blocking transit payments.
Slovnaft and its parent company Hungarian MOL Group announced
on Tuesday they had initiated talks to make payments to Ukrainian operator Ukrtransnafta; news followed on Wednesday that Ukraine had received transit payments that Slovnaft and MOL Group had made on behalf of the Russian Transneft.
Russian oil pipeline operator Transneft said it had restarted pumping oil through the southern branch of the Druzhba pipeline on August 10, after the pipeline was closed down a day earlier in a payment dispute, the spokesman for the company Igor Dyomin told PRIME.
The oil flow was stopped because Transneft claimed that its Ukrainian counterpart Ukrtransnafta had been unable to receive transit fees due to Western sanctions. Transneft sent the fees, but Ukrtransnafta sent it back. Dyomin now confirms that Ukraine had confirmed having received the payment for Russian oil transit.
Slovak Minister of Industry Richard Sulik described the situation as an administrative glitch unrelated to politics.
“It is not a fault of Ukrainians or Russians”, said Sulik and cited a decision made in “a smaller office of a bank in Portugal or Belgium where they did
not administer the payment” because
this office considered administering the Transneft payment a breach of sanctions.
Sulik said that this was the fourth time a disruption like that had occurred since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and that the current payments by Slovnaft to enable the transit are a temporary solution to maintain the flow during August.
Flow further west to Czechia has not been resumed, however. “Disruption of
the imports from the Druzhba pipeline does not limit the operations of Czech refineries”, said Czech Minister of Industry and Trade Josef Sikela on Twitter, adding that reserves contain oil for several days and that the country is working with Poland to begin imports into Czechia.
In Czechia, Druzhba’s client is a Czech company Unipetrol controlled by Polish group PKN Orlen. Other alternative options of oil imports to Czechia include the use of the TAL pipeline from the Italian port city of Trieste, informed the Czech state pipeline operator Mero, a shareholder in TAL Group.
Head of Mero Jaroslav Pantucek said the situation is not as serious as it looks. “Transneft confirmed supplies for the coming months. I think we are witnessing a negotiation game between individual parties”, he told Czech daily DenikN.
The EU agreed to halt imports of Russian oil by December 5, 2022, but Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia were exempted from the embargo due to their limited options to find alternatives for Russian imports, effectively keeping Druzhba operations in place.
Lime buys into Repsol’s Yme offshore oilfield
Lime Petroleum, a subsidiary of Rex International Holding, has agreed to buy a 10 percent stake in the Yme oil field in the North Sea, offshore Norway, from Kuwait’s KUFPEC. Rex said Lime would pay post- tax fee $68.053 million (about NOK 633 million).
Lime said that production from Repsol- operated Yme Field would contribute to
its target of reaching production of 20,000 bpd across various geographies.
The Yme Field is located in PL 316 and PL 316B on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, in the south-eastern part of the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, 130 kilometers northeast of the Ula field.
The water depth is 100 meters. The field comprises two separate main structures,
Gamma and Beta, which are 12 kilometers apart. The reservoirs are in sandstone
of Middle Jurassic age in the Sandnes Formation, at a depth of 3,150 meters.
According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, remaining reserves in the Yme Field stand at 9.70 million Sm3 of
oil equivalent i.e. there are remaining 2P Reserves of about 6.0 mmboe in the Yme Field net to Lime Petroleum.
Production from the field started in October 2021, via the jack-up drilling and production facility Mærsk Inspirer and a wellhead module.
“The field has undergone a commissioning period and is currently ramping up towards a plateau of about 5,000 bopd net to Lime Petroleum in
late Q4 2022. Lime Petroleum intends to commission a summary qualified person’s report on the Yme Field after completion of the Acquisition,” the company said.
Dan Broström, Executive Chairman
of Rex International Holding, said, “This acquisition of more producing assets by Lime Petroleum is part of the Rex Group’s capital management and investment strategy to seize opportunities with an aim to build and unlock value for our stakeholders.
“As part of the acquisition, Lime Petroleum will assume tax balances (as
at 1 January 2022) of NOK309 million (US$33 million). Including the existing tax balance of the Lime Petroleum, the total tax balance will be NOK587 million (US$63 million). These deferred tax assets are recoverable for Lime Petroleum.
This is especially important as
the Norwegian tax system has been restructured to a cash-flow tax, among which is the removal of the specific tax incentive for exploration activities from 2022.”
“Rex considers the acquisition to be highly accretive and it will have a positive impact on revenue, EBITDA, profit and production in the long term. Completion of the Acquisition is expected in the fourth quarter of 2022. Similar to the Brage acquisition, the effective date of the Acquisition, upon
completion, will be deemed to have taken place on 1 January 2022, as is the norm for transactions in the Norwegian Continental Shelf,” Broström added.
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Week 32 12•August•2022