Page 7 - GLNG Week 01 2021

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The fields are slated to yield more than 2mn bar- a long-term lease with the port.
rels per day (bpd) at their peak and may also con- The Australian asset sale involves Royal
tain natural gas as well. Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin Dutch Shell, which said on December 21 that
recently speculated that Vostok Oil might even- it had agreed to divest a 26.25% stake in the
tually be able to deliver as much as 50mn tonnes Queensland Curtis LNG (QCLNG) common
per year (tpy) of LNG to the world market. facilities to Global Infrastructure Partners
Meanwhile, Rosneft has also consolidated its Australia. (See: Shell agrees to sell down stake in
control over Vostok Oil by buying out a private QCLNG common facilities, page 12) The stake
partner. The company announced over the hol- will be sold for $2.5bn, in a deal anticipated to
iday break that it had closed the acquisition of close in the first half of 2021.
100% stakes in firms called Taimyrneftegaz and Shell currently owns 100% of the QCLNG
Taimyrburservis. The former is a subsidiary of common facilities, as well as a 73.75% interest
Neftegazholding, a private oil firm with rights to in the overall QCLNG project. The super-major
the Payakha fields, which will be part of Vostok said the sale would bring its interest in the com-
Oil, as well as other large onshore licences. mon facilities into alignment with its stake in the
The ins and outs of Rosneft’s transaction overall project as it works to sell non-core assets
with Neftegazholding are unclear. However, the and high-grade and simplify its portfolio.
available evidence suggests that some form of In Croatia, meanwhile, the Krk floating LNG
asset swap is underway. Russia’s company reg- (FLNG) terminal entered service on January 1.
istry shows that Neftegazholding has become (See: First LNG tanker arrives at Croatia’s Krk
the owner of a 9% share in RN-Severnaya Neft, terminal, page 13) On that date, the Tristar Ruby
a Rosneft subsidiary working in the Timan-Pe- tanker arrived to offload the first commercial
chora Basin. cargo, consisting of LNG from the US, at the
In other news, the Austro-Romanian oil facility.
firm OMV Petrom has agreed to sell its assets in These developments occurred as the pros-
Kazakhstan to a local private company, drawing pects for US exporters of the super-chilled fuel
a close to two decades of work in the country. improved, thanks to higher LNG prices. There
OMV Petrom will transfer 100% interests in its are even signs of greater long-term confidence,
Kazakh subsidiaries Kom-Munai and Tasbulat as illustrated by Texas LNG signing a 50-year
Oil to a private company based in Nur-Sultan lease agreement with the Port of Brownsville
called Magnetic Oil. Kom-Munai controls the to support its proposed export terminal. (See:
Komsomolskoye oilfield in Kazakhstan’s Man- A positive start to 2021 for LNG, page 9)Texas
gistau Province bordering the Caspian Sea, while LNG joins Annova LNG and Rio Grande LNG
Tasbulat Oil manages the nearby Tasbulat con- in making the commitment.
cession, which contains the Aktas, Tasbulat and
Turkmenoi deposits. LatAmOil: Venezuelan sanctions
US sanctions continue to dog Venezuela’s oil
If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping industry, which has seen output plummet over
the former Soviet Union’s oil and gas sector then please the last few years.
click here for NewsBase’s FSU Monitor. Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oilfield
service providers, said in late December that it
GLNG: A busy period had reduced the size of its workforce in the South
Various developments took place across the American country. The Houston-based firm has
global LNG industry over Christmas, which been ramping down its Venezuelan operations
is typically a quiet period. These included a for some time, in line with US sanctions policy,
significant LNG asset sale announced in Aus- but it is now trimming staff levels even further.
tralia in late December, as well as the start-up As of press time Halliburton had not revealed
of a new import terminal in Croatia. Mean- the extent of the staff cuts. However, a spokes-
while in the US, the third of three companies woman told Reuters that the company was not
proposing to build a new LNG export termi- closing up shop completely.
nal at the Port of Brownsville in Texas signed “Halliburton halted its primary operations in

Week 01 08•January•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P7