Qatar to withdraw from OPEC as of January 2019, says minister
Qatar is withdrawing from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as of January 2019, Saad al-Kaabi, the country’s energy minister said on Monday. The decision to withdraw from OPEC came after Qatar reviewed ways to enhance its role internationally and plan its long-term strategy, al-Kaabi told a news conference.
NDA government earned Rs 11000 billion oil tax revenue in last 4.5 years
Claiming that the NDA government earned oil tax revenue of Rs 11,000 billion in the last four and a half years, the leader of the Congress in the Lok SabhaMallikarjun Kharge Friday alleged that the money had not been used for development and sought to know where it had gone. “They are getting (revenue) from crude oil, diesel and petrol…they got Rs 11,000 billion in these four and half years. They have collected that much of money. Where is that money?,” he asked. Speaking to reporters here, he alleged that the NDA only helped “big corporate friends” with the money. “Have they given it to farmers to empower them? Have they helped the irrigation projects? They did not do anything. Simply they are collecting, they are helping their big corporate friends… companies. That’s why the NPA is growing day by day,” Kharge said. The NDA government is taking money from Reserve Bank of India to give to corporates, he alleged. Almost half of the fuel price is made up of taxes. The Centre levies a total of Rs 19.48 per litre of excise duty on petrol and Rs 15.33 per litre on diesel.
Fuel price: Soon, tanking up in Delhi to be cheaper than in UP
Petrol and diesel will become cheaper in Delhi than UP in a few days, restoring an advantage the capital’s motorists lost on October 5 when UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath matched the Centre’s move to offer relief from high oil prices by reducing tax on fuel while his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal did not budge. The continuous decline in pump prices for the last one-and-a-half months has shrunk the difference between fuel prices in the two states by 67 per cent for petrol and over 42 per cent for diesel in the last 30 days alone. Ajay Bansal of All India Petroleum Dealers’ Association, an umbrella body of petrol pump operators, said the current trend of price reductions by state-run fuel retailing companies indicate price of petrol will fall by Rs 1.10 a litre and diesel by Rs 1.32 in the next six to seven days. This is good news for the capital’s petrol pump operators who had seen sales drop, especially at outlets in areas bordering UP, as motorists preferred to tank up in the neighbouring state where fuel had become cheaper by Rs 3 a litre after the October tax relief. The sharp price movement is because of the way the two states tax fuel. UP has a fixed rate, while Delhi has an ad-valorem system. In UP, the tax amount does not rise or fall when the retailers change the price. But since Delhi charges VAT as a certain per cent of the fuel price, VAT swings sharply with any price change. The ad valorem system amplifies the impact of any price change. So it is good when price goes down but pinches harder than in a fixed rate regime when rates head north. According to IndianOil, the country’s largest fuel retailer, petrol price has cumulatively declined by Rs 9.59 per litre and diesel by Rs 7.56 per litre in Delhi since October 17 as oil companies have passed on the benefit of sliding crude prices and stable rupee-dollar exchange rate.
Govt forms 6-member panel to look at selling 149 fields of ONGC, OIL to pvt firms
The government has constituted a six-member committee to look at selling as many as 149 small and marginal oil and gas fields of state-owned ONGC and OIL to private and foreign companies to boost domestic output, sources said. The panel is headed by NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar and includes Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha, Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg, Oil Secretary M M Kutty, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant and ONGC Chairman and Managing Director Shashi Shanker. Sources said the committee is a follow up of the October 12 meeting called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to review domestic production profile of oil and gas and the roadmap for cutting import dependence by 10 per cent by 2022. At the meeting, the Oil Ministry made a presentation showing that 149 smaller fields of Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), Oil India Ltd (OIL) and other explorers accounted for just 5 per cent of the domestic crude oil production. It was suggested at the meeting that these smaller fields could be given out to private and foreign firms and ONGC could concentrate on the big ones where it could rope in technology partners through production enhancement contracts (PEC) or technical service arrangements. Sources said the ministry was of the view that ONGC should concentrate on the large fields as they contribute to 95 per cent of its production and leave out the rest for private firms. On the anvil is some kind of extended version of the Discovered Small Field (DSF) bid round where discovered and producing fields of ONGC are auctioned to firms offering the maximum share of output to the government, sources said. The six-member panel has begun consultations with the stakeholders on the possible options, they said. This is the second attempt of by the Oil Ministry to take away some of the fields of state-owned ONGC for giving to private and foreign companies. In October last year, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) had identified 15 producing fields with collective reserve of 791.2 million tonnes of crude oil and 333.46 billion cubic metres of gas of national oil companies for handing over to private firms in the hope they would improve upon the baseline estimate and their extraction. The plan, however, could not go through as ONGC strongly countered the DGH proposal with its own proposal that it be allowed to outsource operations on the same terms as the government plan. Sources said ONGC is of the view that it should be allowed the same terms that the government extends to private and foreign firms in DSF. The government gave out 34 fields to private firms by offering them pricing and marketing freedom for oil and gas they produced from the fields in the first round of DSF. The second round of DSF with 25 fields on offer is currently under bidding. The fields offered in DSF were taken away from ONGC and Oil India Ltd on the pretext that they were lying idle and unexploited. But under the present proposal, the government plans to take away discovered and producing fields. Sources said ONGC feels it too should be allowed to seek revenue sharing partnership for its fields. Field operations could be outsourced to foreign or private firms that offered the highest revenue or production share over and above a baseline production. The ministry is reasoning that the areas where the fields were discovered by ONGC were given to the state-owned firm on nomination basis. In the proposal that was mooted in October last year, the plan was to give out 60 per cent stake in 15 fields — 11 of ONGC and four of Oil India. These included Kalok, Ankleshwar, Gandhar and Santhal — the big four oil fields of ONGC in Gujarat. The DGH too had identified 44 fields of ONGC and OIL which could take on partners for production enhancement work where bidders would get the ‘tariff’ that they bid as a return for increasing the output ‘over the baseline production’ for an initial period of 10 years. The Oil Ministry is unhappy with the near stagnant oil and gas production and believes giving out the discovered fields to private firms would help raise output as they can bring in technology and capital, sources said. It has been tasked by the Prime Minister to cut dependence on oil imports by 10 per cent by 2022 from the over 77 per cent dependence in 2014-15. But the dependence has only increased and is now over 83 per cent. The privatisation is repeat of the infamous round in 1992-93 when medium-sized discovered fields like Panna/Mukta and Tapti oil and gas field in western offshore were given to the now defunct Enron Corp of the US and Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL). As many as 28 fields were then awarded. Under this regime, ONGC was made licensee and given an option to farm in 40 per cent of stake. The controversial privatisation under the then oil minister Satish Sharma had resulted in an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Oil firms chosen to expand Qatar’s north field gas reservoir to be named mid-2019: Minister
The oil companies that Qatar selects to expand its north field natural gas reservoir will be announced in mid-2019, the country’s energy minister Saad al-Kaabi said on Monday. Qatar plans to build four additional liquefied national gas trains in mid-2019, al-Kaabi said at a news conference. Qatar will announce the selected partners to build the largest ethane cracker in the world in the first quarter of 2019, he said.