Page 13 - DMEA Week 04 2020

DMEA
NEWS IN BRIEF
DMEA
Qatar: not keen to
renegotiate LNG contracts
with India
Qatar is not willing to renegotiate prices under its long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) contracts with India, Qatari energy minister, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, announced yesterday.
Reuters quoted Al-Kabbi at an event with his Indian counterpart, Dharmendra Pradhan, in New Delhi as saying that Qatar was keen on “supplying more volumes of LNG to India.”
“We are not renegotiating contracts; we stick with contracts – both sides,” the Qatari official stressed, adding that Doha was hoping for “additional new contacts and volumes to comply with requirements from India.”
On his part, Pradhan said that the price renegotiation would “make supplies cheaper for price-sensitive customers after a sharp fall in spot prices of the cleaner fuel.”
India imports 8.5 million tonnes of LNG annually under long-term supply deals with Qatar. The massive imports date back to 1999 when the Indian government signed a long- term LNG deal with Qatar for supplies from 2004.
Under the deal, the price of gas was linked to the cost of crude, as oil markets were well developed compared with that of LNG. As a result, the deal was renegotiated in 2015 with almost 50 per cent cut in prices, a move after which India had agreed to buy an extra one million tonnes per annum of the super-cooled gas from Qatar.
“The current formula of benchmarking gas prices with crude oil is not correct,” Pradhan pointed out, stressing that there should be an “independent pricing formula for gas.”
“We must find a formula between the current practices and other international prices,” he added.
Yemeni rebels claim new
drone attacks on Saudi
Aramco
Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed that they launched attacks with missiles and drones on Saudi Aramco in the kingdom’s southern Jazan region, Bloomberg reported.
The rebels also targeted Abha and Jazan airports as well as Khamis Mushait base
and other key targets inside Saudi Arabia
in response to air strikes on Yemen, Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree said on television. He didn’t give a date or more details on the attacks.
Saudi Aramco declined to comment, but a Saudi oil official said that all the Houthis’
missiles were intercepted. The official asked not to be identified for lack of authorization to speak to media.
Brent crude futures pared gains after surging as much as 1.9%. The benchmark grade was trading 25 cents higher at $59.76 a barrel at 2:41 p.m. in London.
Aerial Attacks. Jazan is the site of a 400,000-barrels-a-day Saudi Aramco refinery, but the city, near the border with Yemen, isn’t home to crude oil production facilities or major export terminals. The Jazan refinery and petrochemical complex is expected to be fully operational in the second half of 2020, Aramco said at the time of its initial public offering last year.
The Iran-backed Houthis have been fighting a Saudi-led military coalition since 2015, a war that has regularly sent tensions
in the Gulf soaring. They have repeatedly claimed responsibility for attacks on targets in Saudi Arabia, most notably the Sept. 14 aerial attacks that temporarily paralyzed half of the kingdom’s production capacity. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia, however, said Iran was behind that assault.
The Houthis have launched hundreds of missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia since 2015. However few of them have caused casualties or major damage to infrastructure.
The Houthi attacks appeared to halt at the end of last year as momentum grew behind efforts to end the war, which sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and brought Yemen to the brink of famine. The U.S. supports efforts to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict, and in November, Omani Foreign Minister Yousef Bin Alawi, whose country is facilitating talks between the sides, said he’s optimistic that Saudi Arabia and the Houthis could reach an agreement.
Air Liquide Arabia starts
hydrogen supply to Saudi
refinery
Air Liquide Arabia said it has begun commercial operations at its west coast pipeline network in Yanbu by supply hydrogen to a refinery owned by Saudi Aramco and an Exxon Mobil subsidiary.
The SAMREF refinery represents Air liquid Arabia’s (ALAR) first customer on the Yanbu pipeline network, which will also start suppling three other major industrial companies in Yanbu Industrial City in the coming months.
The hydrogen supply marks a shift towards cleaner fuels from crude for Saudi Aramco, amid rising global warming concerns that
are adding pressure on the world’s largest oil producers to take action.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, told the United Nations in 2015 it would reduce expected carbon emissions by up to 130 million tonnes a year by 2030.
Francois-Xavier Haulle, general manager at Air Liquide Arabia said the company is “committed to expand further its investments and deliver further synergies around the circular economy created by its hydrogen pipeline infrastructure.”
Air Liquide Arabia will produce the hydrogen supplied to SAMREF from its global-scale hydrogen production site located on the premises of YASREF refinery, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and China Petrochemical Corporation (SINOPEC).
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