Middle East

Despite Baghdad’s push to drum up oil sector investment, foreign majors continue to balk at the opportunities on offer. Exxon’s decision to walk away from a major project has profound implications for Iraq’s ambitious upstream expansion plans.

Total is keen for a stake in the expansion of Qatar’s world-leading LNG facilities. With existing connections to Doha, and LNG expertize, it looks well placed to succeed. It’s also looking to bid in Abu Dhabi’s debut licencing round – if the geology is right.

A mammoth week of negotiations culminated in Opec’s sparring members effectively agreeing to release an extra 500,000 b/d onto global markets on 22 June. Individual country allocations have been replaced by a group-wide ceiling that will permit the stronger members to capitalize on falling output from the weaker countries.

Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil sector received further positive news this week with a breakthrough on a long-stalled deal to increase near-term...

Austrian firm OMV is currently testing wellheads at its Block S2 in Yemen’s central Shabwa basin, CEO Rainer Seele tells...

Aramco has become its own best domestic customer for naphtha. Output is set to receive a further boost from the start-up of the 400,000 b/d Jazan refinery.

While Algeria currently has a healthy cushion between peak demand and installed capacity, consumption is steadily rising. If Algiers wants to avoid a repeat of the 2012 unrest over blackouts, it must step on the gas with a number of delayed CCGT plants.

A week after increasing power prices, Cairo has hiked prices for transport fuels by 50% as it attempts to completely remove energy subsides by 2020-21.

Iraq has restored an important domestic pipeline link between its northern fields and Baghdad. The 40,000 b/d pipeline will carry...