ONGC hopeful of entering into partnerships with global E&P firms for 25 oil and gas blocks during its roadshow
ONGC is hopeful of entering into partnerships with global E&P firms for 25 oil and gas blocks during its roadshow in Abu Dhabi next week. ONGC is organising the roadshow in Abu Dhabi on October 16 and 17. “The roadshow will offer valuable insights into business opportunities within India’s offshore oil and gas infrastructure sector,” the Maharatna company said. Aligned with its growth plans, ONGC is embarking on an expedited development of multiple offshore fields over the next three years. Its objective is to establish more than 25 offshore facilities, lay over 1,000 km of subsea pipelines, and create associated infrastructure, requiring an investment of $11 billion, it added. ONGC has drawn out the Energy Strategy 2040, which reflects its resolute commitment to double oil and gas production, expand refining capacity, diversify into renewable energy, and bolster our non-oil and gas ventures. To achieve substantial growth and diversify its energy portfolio, ONGC prioritises the early monetisation of discoveries through accelerated project execution. The Maharatna said it is also making significant investments in deepwater exploration, improved oil recovery, and enhanced oil recovery projects, maximising production efficiency and tapping untapped reserves. ONGC said it will incur a capex of around Rs 100 billion annually for the next five years on exploration. The company will continue with its capex programme of over Rs 300 billion with an emphasis on focused exploration and enhanced capex investment for the rejuvenation of mature western offshore fields.
Europe’s Largest Economy May Face Wild Gas Price Volatility This Winter
LNG demand in Asia and Europe is beginning to rise ahead of the peak winter season amid a calmer market compared to last year’s chaos and record-high prices. But neither Europe nor Asia should be complacent about winter gas supply as winter weather, delivery disruptions, and geopolitical tensions could upend the LNG market once again and send prices soaring. Last week, spot LNG prices in Asia for November delivery slumped by 10% week-on-week to $13.5 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) amid soft demand and warm weather, industry sources told Reuters. Europe’s benchmark natural gas prices were also down amid high inventories at storage facilities in the EU. Ahead of the 2023/2024 winter, gas storage sites in the EU were 97% full as of October 9, according to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe. Europe hit its target to have storage 90% full by November 1 months in advance. But this week, the gas market felt the heat of sudden supply disruptions and European and UK benchmark prices surged. The front-month Dutch TTF Natural Gas Futures, the benchmark for Europe’s gas trading, soared by 15% on Monday and by another 12% on Tuesday after a leak shut down an offshore pipeline between Finland and Estonia. One year after the Nord Stream pipeline blasts, the specter of sabotage on critical energy infrastructure in Europe is back. “Based on information from the Finnish Border Guard, Gasgrid Finland has given its expert assessment according to which the damage was not caused by the normal gas transmission process,” gas grid operator Gasgrid Finland said on Tuesday.
Russia Denies Talks Of A Gas Cartel
There are no plans for the creation of a natural gas cartel similar to the OPEC cartel in crude oil, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Friday. “There are no discussions to set up a (gas) cartel,” Novak told RT Arabic TV as quoted by Reuters. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) is an organization of gas producers and exporters but it is not coordinating supply to the market the way OPEC does. Russia is a member of the GECF and its top energy official Novak said in the televised interview that the gas organization was “mostly about exchanging views.” Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the halt of most of Russian pipeline gas supplies to Europe, the EU has turned to LNG imports and increased deliveries via offshore pipelines from Norway and North Africa to replace the Russian supply, which accounted for around one-third of all European gas imports before the war in Ukraine. The EU aims to ditch Russian gas by 2027. Having lost the European market, Russia has raised pipeline exports to China and its global LNG exports, which are neither sanctioned nor too shunned in gas-starved Europe. This year, the exports of Russian gas giant Gazprom to Europe have slumped and dragged its profits down. Gazprom has reported a massive drop in its first-half net profit as deliveries to Europe plunged compared to the same period in 2022 when Russia was still supplying pipeline gas to its European customers. The major drop in Gazprom’s gas deliveries to key customers was due to the halt of Russian pipeline gas exports to nearly all European countries. Gazprom started to reduce supply via the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany in June 2022, claiming an inability to service gas turbine maintenance outside Russia due to the Western sanctions against Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine. This was weeks before the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines at the end of September 2022, which definitively closed all pipeline gas routes of Russia’s gas to Germany.
Bangladesh Govt mulls RLNG import from India
Bangladesh government moves to import re-gasified liquefied natural gas (RLNG) from India through cross-border pipeline under a greater contingency plan for failsafe fuel supply, amid volatility on global energy market. In an initial bid, around 300 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) would be brought in from India’s H-Energy by 2025, State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources (MPEMR) Nasrul Hamid has told the FE. He said state-run Petrobangla would also get an additional 200mmcfd gas by then from private company Dipon Gas, which is planning to import around 500 mmcfd of RLNG from India. “They would sell the remaining 300mmcfd to private consumers.” This is going to be a second cross-country pipeline between India and Bangladesh for carrying energy. The first one has been carrying diesel from India since its inauguration on March 18 last, said sources. India’s H-Energy, a subsidiary of Hiranandani Group, has intended to supply RLNG from Digha in West Bengal to Khulna in Bangladesh after laying a 275-kilometre cross-border pipeline from Kanai Chatta in East Midnapore district to Shrirampur in Khulna. With this end in view, the state energy corporation, Petrobangla, had inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with H-Energy a couple of years ago. The initial target is to import RLNG equivalent to around 1.0 million- tonne per annum (MTPA) from H-Energy through this pipeline to feed the 800MW Rupsha combined-cycle power plant, owned by state-owned North West Power Generation Company Ltd (NWPGCL), for 22 years. “The Indian company will have an option to increase the RLNG supply equivalent to around 2.0 MTPA of LNG,” said one source. Prior to the H-Energy accord, India’s state-owned Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) also had inked an MoU to supply RLNG to Bangladesh. The under-construction 800MW plant at Rupsha in Khulna would be the major consumer of the imported fuel. The plant will require around 130mmcfd RLNG to generate electricity. The remaining natural gas could be supplied into the national grid. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has agreed to lend US$ 600 million and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) around $200 million to implement the Rupsha power-plant project with two gas-fired units, each having 400MW capacity. The Bangladesh government intends to provide the remaining $ 150 million. Alongside RLNG imports, Bangladesh has planned to augment LNG imports, said Mr Hamid, adding that Bangladesh eyes inking more sale and purchase agreements (SPAs) with the suppliers. “Nigeria and some other countries have sent proposals for striking SPAs to supply LNG under long-term arrangements,” the minister said. Recently, Petrobangla inked two new SPAs with QatarEnergy and OQ Trading of Oman to import up to 3.0 MTPA of additional LNG from 2026 onwards. The cabinet committee on economic affairs also has approved signing three more new SPAs to import LNG under long-term deals from Malaysia’s Perintis Akal Sdn Bhd, local Summit Oil and Shipping Company Ltd. (SOSCL), and Excelerate Energy Bangladesh Ltd, a subsidiary of U.S.-based Excelerate Energy. Imports under the new deals would start in 2024. Bangladesh has planned to get two more FSRUs built by US’s Excelerate Energy and Summit Group with the re-gasification capacity of 3.75MTPA each by 2027 to facilitate new LNG imports, Mr Hamid said. With these two new FSRUs, Bangladesh’s operational FSRUs will be four by 2027. The country’s maiden 7.50MTPA land-based LNG terminal is also expected to be built by 2027. “With plenty of long-term LNG suppliers booked, Bangladesh is expected to squeeze LNG imports from the volatile spot market after 2027,” Mr Hamid said about the forward energy planning, apparently necessitated by crises coming in lockstep with one another on the global landscape that sometime imperil supply chains. Since the beginning of LNG import from the spot market on September 25 in 2020, Bangladesh had imported a total of 36 LNG cargoes until August 2023, according to state-run Rupantarita Prakritik Gas Company Ltd (RPGCL) statistics. Apart from the plan to augment imports, Bangladesh has also chalked out a plan to boost natural- gas supply from the local gas fields, said Mr Hamid. A total of 15 gas wells will be drilled within next one year and 31 more within next several years to augment the country’s overall natural-gas output, he said. “A 65-km pipeline will be built within several years to bring stranded gas from Bhola island into the mainland,” he added. Chevron Bangladesh has also planned to augment natural gas supplies from new areas by 2027, he said. The US company already got a new flank area adjacent to the country’s largest-producing Bibiyana gas field for exploration. It initiated drilling BY-27 well in late August, which is set to be completed within several months, according to Petrobangla. The US oil major is also in talks with Petrobangla to expand its exploration area further especially in the unexplored onshore Block-8 and Block-11, Mr Hamid said. Chevron, along with another American firm, ExxonMobil, also is in talks with the government to carry out offshore exploration, he said.
Middle East Energy Deals In Question Over Israel
On Wednesday, BP Inc. (NYSE:BP) reassured investors that its $2B deal with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (Adnoc) to jointly buy a 50% stake in Israeli gas producer NewMed Energy (OTCPK:DKDRF) remains on track, despite Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza. According to Reuters, BP’s head of gas and low-carbon energy Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath told shareholders at the company’s investor day in Denver that they remain “very optimistic” about the deal. The two companies are reportedly weighing on whether to improve their initial offer. NewMed Energy (OTCPK:DKDRF) is the majority shareholder and main operator of the giant Leviathan Natural Gas Field with a 45.3% working interest, while Chevron Corp.(NYSE:CVX) and Ratio Oil Corp. have a 39.7% and 15% stake, respectively. But that reassurance does not necessarily mean the deal is close to being consummated. The deal was thrown into question last week after an independent panel appointed by NewMed recommended raising the asking price by 10%-12%, or as much as ~$250M, which might seem like a stretch considering the company currently has a market cap of $2.9B and $87 million in cash but $1.73B in debt. Meanwhile, reports have emerged that executives at BP and Adnoc are anticipating further delays on the deal until the political situation improves. Experts are worried that a surge in civilian casualties could make it politically untenable for the companies to proceed, with the death toll in Gaza already approaching 2,000, mostly civilians, and more than 7,000 wounded in just the first week of the conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forged an emergency government on Wednesday to direct war against Hamas, and his defense minister vowed to wipe the militant group “off the face of the earth” in what is shaping up as one of the bloodiest conflicts in the region in recent times. NewMed and its two partners discovered the Leviathan Natural Gas Field in the Levant Basin Province in 2010. The gas field straddles the sea borders of Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. With 22.9 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas, Leviathan is the largest natural gas reservoir in the Mediterranean, and one of the largest producing assets in the region. Lebanon’s Gas Quest Could Go Bust But the NewMed takeover is not the only energy project likely to be disrupted by the Israel-Hamas war. Back in August, French energy group TotalEnergies (NYSE:TTE) set the first drilling rig at its location in the Mediterranean Sea off Lebanon’s coast near Israel’s border with the country looking to commence operations in search for gas. The cash-strapped nation hopes that future gas sales could help the country pull out of its deep financial crisis that has seen the local currency lose more than 98% of its value. “The arrival of the equipment marks an important step in the preparation of the drilling of the exploration well in Block 9, which will begin towards the end of August 2023,” TotalEnergies said in a statement. TotalEnergies leads a consortium of energy companies working on the offshore project, which includes Italian oil and gas giant Eni S.p.A. (NYSE:E) as well as state-owned QatarEnergy. The drilling operations came after a landmark U.S.-brokered agreement last year that saw Lebanon and Israel establish a maritime border for the first time ever. Back in May, Lebanon’s Energy Minister Walid Fayad said they hope to determine whether the exploratory block has recoverable gas reserves by the end of the current year. Unfortunately, the war is very likely to make cooperation between the two countries almost impossible, with Lebanon being home to Israel’s arch-enemy, Hezbollah. Two days ago, Israeli shelling hit southern Lebanese towns on Wednesday in response to a fresh rocket attack by Hezbollah, as cross-border violence extended into a fourth day. The Israeli military also revealed it had hit a Hezbollah position with an air strike and also attacked Lebanon after a military post near the Israeli town of Arab al-Ahram She was targeted with anti-tank fire. The United States has moved one of the largest aircraft carriers in the world and an accompanying strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean aiming to deter Hezbollah and Iran from taking advantage of the situation. Meanwhile, recent allegations that Iran helped Hamas plan the Israel attack is very likely to seriously strain relations between Washington and Tehran. Standard Chartered has opined that the U.S. has three broad policy options in relation to Iran’s oil output: (1) the status quo, with output at 3mb/d or higher, (2) the pre-2023 plateau of close to 2.5mb/d, or (3) near-zero exports with output below 2mb/d as reached at the end of the Trump administration. The analysts note that option #1 was the most expedient policy for the U.S. in terms of both market influence and geopolitics just a week ago. However, the latest developments in the Middle East have brought options #2 and #3 into focus as potential policy targets. Iran’s oil output and exports have increased sharply under the Biden administration, with production hitting 3mb/d, including 500,000 b/d in the current year, while exports sit just under 2mb/d.