Page 8 - AfrOil Week 27

AfrOil NRG AfrOil

The charges relate to the major’s integrated gas for an increasing share of the country’s output
business, namely its LNG operations in Aus- over the coming decades. Gazprom Neft has just
tralia, and upstream activities in Brazil and US signed a deal with Zarubezhneft on joint extrac-
shale basins. tion of hard-to-recover reserves in Western Sibe-
It marks an end to an era for the German ria, less than a week after announcing a similar
power sector, after energy giants E.ON and RWE partnership with Lukoil and Tatneft for projects
last week completed a $25bn asset swap that in the Volga-Urals area.
began in 2018 – one of the largest deals in the his- Elsewhere, Uzbekistan is pushing ahead with
tory of German industry. Under the final stage of the revamp of its refining sector, hiring South
the transaction, RWE received E.ON’s renewable Korea’s SK Engineering & Construction to
and gas storage assets. RWE is investing heav- undertake front-end engineering design (FEED)
ily in clean energy, with $5.6bn earmarked for work for a $500mn upgrade of the Bukhara oil
new projects in Europe, North America and the refinery. Last month work also commenced on a
Asia-Pacific region, with $1.1bn set aside for similar project at the Ferghana refinery, Uzbeki-
German investments. stan’s other main oil processing plant.
Tashkent’s goal is to produce more vehicle
If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping and jet fuels, of higher quality, to help reduce
Europe’s oil and gas sector then please click here for its imports and make fuel shortages a thing of
NewsBase’s EurOil Monitor. the past. But the unanswered question is how
Uzbekistan will procure enough crude to run its
FSU: Nord Stream 2 battles on refineries at full capacity.
Russia’s embattled Nord Stream 2 project cleared
a key hurdle this week, with Danish regulators If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping
revising the construction permit they issued last the former Soviet Union’s oil and gas sector then
year to allow Gazprom to use anchored vessels please click here for NewsBase’s FSU Monitor .
to finish the remaining 120 km of the pipeline’s
offshore section. It is understood that Gazprom Japan invests big in African LNG
intends to use two Russian vessels stationed at Japan has announced a $14.4bn investment drive
the German port of Mukran to finish the pipe- by some of the country’s leading energy develop-
line, and anchoring could be necessary. ers and financiers in Mozambique’s LNG poten-
While this is a clear step forward for Nord tial, strongly suggesting that a group of private
Stream 2, now running over a year behind sched- and state banks have agreed to lend to Total’s
ule, the threat of stricter US sanctions continues Mozambique LNG project.
to hang over the project. A bill announcing new Four Japanese private banks – MUFG Bank,
sanctions is making its way through US Con- Mizuho Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking and
gress, but both Germany and the EU have said Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank – will provide
they will consider countering US actions with most of the debt funding for the project, and
measures of their own. the state-owned Japan Bank for International
Russian producers are banding together to Cooperation (JBIC) will supply $3bn in loans.
share technology and expertise to develop hard- The African Development Bank (AfDB) will also
to-recover oil, which is anticipated to account support the project, the report said.

P8 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 27 08•July•2020