Saudi Arabia signed upstream gas exploration and production agreements with Russia's Lukoil and Sinopec of China yesterday as Spanish and Italian firms lined up to ink deals later in the day that the kingdom hopes will attract billions of dollars in investments.
Contracts to explore for and produce non-associated gas in the northern part of the vast Rub al-Khali, or Empty Quarter desert, were also to be signed at the same ceremony in Riyadh by a consortium formed by Spanish oil group Repsol YPF and Italy's Eni.
State-owned Saudi Aramco is a partner in the three ventures, controlling 20 percent of the stakes in each of the projects in three regions covering a total area of 120,000km2.
"We expect investment in the first phase [exploration] to reach US$300 million," said China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec,
The Sinopec-Aramco joint company will be incorporated in the Virgin Islands, he said, noting that last year China imported 11.92 million tonnes of crude from Saudi Arabia and this year plans to ship in 13.15 million tonnes.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi said the contract area for Sinopec covered 38,800km2.
"Efforts are also currently underway to establish a partnership between Aramco and Sinopec to provide the Chinese market with petroleum products through investments in joint venture refineries," Nuaimi told reporters.
Vagit Alekperov, president and chief executive officer of Lukoil had first put pen to paper with Abdullah Jumah, president and CEO of Saudi Aramco and the kingdom's oil minister.
"For the first time in the history of bilateral relations the doors to Saudi Arabia have been opened to the Russian petroleum business community," said Alekperov.
"The size of the investment will depend on the size of prospection and exploration work and it could go up to around US$three billion," he said.
Al-Nuaimi looked to future profits. "The area Lukoil and Saudi Aramco will jointly explore measuring 29,900km2 contains promising indications that we expected will yield profitable returns to the kingdom and Lukoil," the minister noted.
Under the terms of the contracts being signed yesterday, the exploration phase has been set at 10 years, divided into three periods of five, three and two years, with the latter two optional, a senior oil ministry official said Saturday night.
The contracts, awarded in late January, will run for a maximum of 40 years, the ministry's director general in the oil-rich Eastern Province, Yahya Shinawi, told reporters.
The north Rub al-Khali basin has been divided into three "contract areas," designated A for Lukoil, B for Sinopec and C for the Spanish-Italian consortium.
Associated gas and oil are "outside the scope" of the agreements, although they provide for the conditional exploitation of 500 million barrels of oil in place, he said.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS