Page 15 - AsianOil Week 30

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Governments and
Buzi district. Public health measures designed to in the region are now running behind schedule businesses in Europe are
curb the spread of the outbreak have disrupted because of travel restrictions put in place to slow looking at hydrogen more
the movement of personnel and the delivery the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. seriously.
of goods and equipment to the work site, they Over in Nigeria, African asset manager FBN-
explained. Quest sees downstream prospects improving
South Sudan’s oil industry has also been hit thanks to recent reforms to fuel pricing. Earlier
hard by the pandemic. According to Awow Dan- this year the government introduced a more
iel Chuang, the undersecretary of the country’s market-based template for gasoline pricing,
Ministry of Petroleum, the virus has disrupted and the central bank is working to unify foreign
operations at a number of oilfields, bringing exchange rates. FBNQuest believes these steps
output levels down by 20,000 barrels per day to could lead to full market deregulation, which
170,000 bpd. It has also postponed the commis- would encourage investment in refining and
sioning of an 8,000 bpd oil refinery near Juba, fuel supply.
the capital city. Nigeria’s fuel retail segment is already seeing
increased competition, with players Ardova and
If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping 11 Plc replacing France’s Total as the top suppli-
Africa’s oil and gas sector then please click here for ers. Competition should intensify further if lib-
NewsBase’s AfrOil Monitor. eralised prices are here to stay.

DMEA: refining contracts, pricing reforms If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping
Six international contractors are vying for the downstream sector of Africa and the Middle East,
technical consultancy work at Kuwait’s al-Ah- then please click here for NewsBase’s DMEA Monitor.
madi oil refinery, according to local press. US
firms Worley Parsons, Fluor and KBC, the Europe prepares for the revolution
UK’s Amec Foster Wheeler, Japan’s Toyo and Europe is preparing for a potential hydrogen rev-
France’s Technip have all been pre-qualified for olution, with governments and businesses both
the contract, which relates to various upgrade looking at the fuel’s role as a future energy source
projects. more seriously than ever before.
Kuwait is modernising its al-Ahmadi and The UK has established a new hydrogen
Abdullah refineries and constructing a new council, whereas in Italy, the gas grid opera-
one in the southern port of al-Zour. Its goal is tor Snam has finished testing a hybrid hydro-
to double its throughput capacity to 1.6mn bpd gen-blend turbine designed by Baker Hughes.
by 2025. Its plan is to feed up to 7 bcm per year into the
Meanwhile in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Italian gas grid – enough to cover the gas needs
the UAE’s Target Engineering has landed a con- of 3mn families.
tract worth $53.3mn to replace naphtha and slop Snam and 10 other European grid oper-
oil storage tanks at Saudi Aramco’s 550,000 bpd ators have also published a plan for devel-
Ras Tanura oil refinery. oping a 6,800-km hydrogen grid by 2030,
While Middle Eastern operators continue to mainly consisting of repurposed gas pipe-
dish out contracts, many downstream projects lines, reaching 23,000 km in size a decade

Week 30 30•July•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P15