Page 16 - AsianOil Week 01 2021

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These firms will now be able to proceed to the of Quitunda, where Total is relocating commu-
final stage of the contest, he said. nities as it builds export facilities and other infra-
Osu did not name any of the shortlisted bidders structure. It was repelled by government forces.
or say when the department hoped to wrap up the The fighting is the closest yet to Total’s con-
licensing round. He stressed, though, that the bidding struction camp and the first attack to happen
process was “still ongoing in line with our published within the Mozambique LNG concession area.
timelines on [the] DPR website and bid portal.” It occurred under 1 km from an airstrip that the
In Angola, the National Oil, Gas and Biofuels company has built to serve the project.
Agency (ANPG) has set a date for the launch of a In other news, the board of Saudi petrochem-
licensing round covering nine blocks in the Lower icals giant SABIC has backed the issue of $1.2bn
Congo Basin and the Kwanza Basin. The contest in dividends from earnings in the second half of
had originally been due to take place in May 2020, 2020. The move comes after the company, which
but the agency has now committed to a start date was bought by national oil producer Saudi Ara-
of April 30, 2021. It will accept offers until June 9, mco last summer, returned to profit in the three
2021, and all participating firms must be prepared months ending September 30, 2020, after incur-
to meet “[as] a mandatory condition of participa- ring three straight quarterly losses.
tion the payment of an entry fee in the amount of Meanwhile in Nigeria, Waltersmith Petro-
$1mn, which will allow access to the data pack- man Oil has secured 2,000-4,000 barrels per day
ages related to the basins to bid,” ANPG said in a (bpd) in oil supplies for its modular refinery in
statement. Imo State under a deal with Seplat Petroleum.
In other news, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Mines and The oil will be sourced from the Ohaja South
Petroleum has announced plans to exit the con- field at the OML53 permit.
tract it signed with US-based GreenComm Tech- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari
nologies last April for the construction of a new launched the 5,000 bpd Waltersmith refinery in
gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant in the Somali region. late November. The facility also receives oil from
A ministry official confirmed earlier this week Waltersmith’s own Ibigwe marginal oilfield.
that the $3.6bn deal was being cancelled because
GreenComm had grossly misrepresented its tech- If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping
nical and financial capabilities. the downstream sector of Africa and the Middle East,
then please click here for NewsBase’s DMEA Monitor.
If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping
Africa’s oil and gas sector then please click here for EurOil: Europe gains import options
NewsBase’s AfrOil Monitor. Southeast Europe started importing natural gas
from two new sources at the start of this year,
DMEA: Mozambique militancy on the rise cutting into the market share of Russia’s Gaz-
France’s Total has withdrawn workers from prom, the region’s main supplier.
Mozambique LNG, following an attack by sus- BP announced late on December 31 that the
pected Islamists within the $20bn export pro- Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) pipeline network
ject’s concession area. was now fully operational. SGC consists of three
Militants with suspected links to Islamic State pipelines that run from Azerbaijan through the
have been battling government forces in north- South Caucasus and Turkey and into Southeast
ern Mozambique for three years, with attacks Europe, carrying gas from the offshore BP-oper-
having grown more frequent over the past year. ated Shah Deniz 2 (SD2) field. Construction of
The latest assault on January 1 was on the village the corridor’s last section, the 10bn cubic metre

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