Page 18 - MEOG Week 03 2021

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is reeling from the impact of the coronavirus through competitive bidding”.
pandemic. But Ukraine’s lenders are concerned This approach illustrates the growing flexi-
that the government is backtracking on reform. bility in the LNG market and Commonwealth,
with support from Gunvor Group, hopes that
If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping it will win over customers more easily than its
the former Soviet Union’s oil and gas sector then please competitors thanks to the variety of options it
click here for NewsBase’s FSU Monitor. has on offer.

GLNG: Transit bottlenecks, project pro- If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping
gress the global LNG sector then please click here for
Congestion delaying LNG shipments from the NewsBase’s GLNG Monitor.
US to Asia via the Panama Canal is expected to
last for the duration of the winter months, when Latin America: Mixed results in
demand peaks, according to traders cited by Guyana-Suriname basin
Reuters. This comes despite the canal’s regulator Offshore South America, the Guyana-Suriname
saying it had made changes designed to speed up basin continues to draw strong interest – and
transit through the waterway. mixed results.
The bottleneck is contributing to record- In Guyana, the US super-major ExxonMobil
high Asian spot prices, alongside freezing win- has reportedly experienced a disappointment at
ter weather and some supply outages. Reuters the Stabroek block.
reported that LNG carriers had to wait for up A spokeswoman for the company’s Guya-
to two weeks to transit the canal in December. nese subsidiary told OilNOW earlier this week
However, the canal’s regulatory authority told that the Hassa-1 well had not encountered any
the news service that the wait had now halved to hydrocarbons in the primary target intervals.
one week. Analysts and traders expect the con- She also stated that there had been hydrocarbon
gestion to last until March. shows in other intervals but did not provide fur-
Meanwhile, certain LNG developers are ther details.
showing signs of confidence in longer-term “This serves as a reminder that geologic risk
demand for the super-chilled fuel. Last week, is inherent to frontier oil and gas exploration
Tellurian’s co-founder and executive chairman, activities,” the spokeswoman remarked. “None-
Charif Souki, said his company was targeting theless, ExxonMobil remains committed to
this summer to begin construction of the Drift- evaluating the potential in our offshore Guyana
wood LNG terminal in Louisiana. blocks using our world-class technology and
“There is a strong need for additional lique- technical capabilities.”
faction capacity and we’re probably the project The US giant and its partners have already
that is the closest to starting construction,” he discovered crude oil in more than a dozen sec-
said. A final investment decision (FID) has not tions of Stabroek. They have estimated the recov-
yet been reached on Driftwood, but Souki said erable reserves of the block at around 9bn boe.
the level of customer interest in offtake from the Meanwhile, France’s Total has had better luck
project had increased “pretty dramatically” over in Suriname’s offshore zone.
the past month. The French company and its US-based
Separately, a tender was launched this week partner Apache revealed last week that they
for offtake from the planned 8.4mn tonne per had struck oil at Block 58. In a statement, Total
year (tpy) Commonwealth LNG project, also in reported that the Keskesi-1 well had encoun-
Louisiana. The company noted that this is “the tered “63 metres net pay of hydrocarbons, com-
first ever tender process in which prospective prised of 58 metres net black oil, volatile oil, and
LNG customers can secure future term supply at gas pay in good quality Campano-Maastrichtian
volumes, pricing and durations of their choosing reservoirs, along with 5 metres of net volatile oil

P18 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 03 20•January•2021