Page 15 - AsianOil Week 35

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Neptune’s fortunes were lifted in August penalises companies for charging too much for
when it made the Dugong oil discovery off vehicle fuel in Russia.
Norway – the country’s largest find of the year The so-called damper mechanism means
containing up to 120mn barrels of oil equivalent companies pay more in tax when domestic fuel
(boe). It now says there is scope for additional prices are higher than export price. But when
potential at the site, but has not divulged details. Russian prices are lower, they receive a subsidy.
The pandemic caused European fuel prices to
If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping collapse, but Russian prices were relatively stable.
Europe’s oil and gas sector then please click here for As such, suppliers suffered some $3.2bn in losses
NewsBase’s EurOil Monitor. from the pandemic as a result of the damper.
Rosneft is now seeking amendments – hope-
Gazprom’s worst quarter in many years fully ones that allow it to claw back some of its
Russia’s Gazprom has reported its worst set of losses. But the Finance Ministry is likely to block
quarterly results since the 2000s, as the corona- such a move, or simply compensate for any
virus (COVID-19) pandemic took its toll on the changes by introducing an additional tax on the
company’s European sales. industry elsewhere.
Gazprom’s EBITDA was $1.3bn, versus
$7.4bn a year ago, marking its worst earnings in If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping
at least a dozen years. The company was also free the former Soviet Union’s oil and gas sector then please
cash flow (FCF) negative, and its net debt crept click here for NewsBase’s FSU Monitor.
up 9% to around $53bn.
Gazprom’s European gas business performed US LNG bounces back
particularly poorly, with prices down 38% and US LNG operations that were disrupted by Hur-
sales volumes down 16.7%. COVID-19 and its ricane Laura were resuming this week, amid a
impact on demand was the main factor here, but broader recovery from the slowdown over the
high levels of gas in storage, a warm winter and a summer, when numerous cargoes scheduled for
pre-pandemic glut in global LNG supply did not loading from US terminals were cancelled.
help matters. Its sales in Russia offered compar- On August 31 it was reported that Cheniere
ative stability. Energy, the leading US LNG exporter, was
The worst is now over for Gazprom, with restarting its Sabine Pass liquefaction terminal in
its European sales continuing their recovery Louisiana, which had been shut down in prepa-
and prices slowly but surely rising. But it will be ration for the hurricane making landfall in the
struggling with the fallout from this steep fall in area. The facility is reported not to have suffered
earnings for some time. any significant damage.
Rosneft is understood to be unhappy with On the same day, Sempra Energy said it
a tax mechanism introduced last year that had been able to conduct preliminary visual

Week 35 03•September•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P15