Greece’s Hellenic Petroleum Sell-Off Stalls
No binding bids have been submitted for a majority stake in Greece’s biggest oil refiner Hellenic Petroleum, dealing a blow to a key part of a planned sell-off of state assets mandated by international bailouts. Switzerland-based commodities trader and miner Glencore had teamed up with CIEP Participations, and Vitol, the world’s largest oil trader, with Algeria’s Sonatrach after they were shortlisted to bid for a 50.1 percent stake in Hellenic. Greece’s privatisation agency said the lack of bids was “due to reasons related to the short-listed parties and recent developments in the international environment that affect the consortia.” It did not elaborate. An agency official told Reuters that potential investors had made demands beyond what Greece could satisfy. Veto rights and a bigger role for minority shareholders after the deal may also have put prospective bidders off, the official added. The board of the agency will meet to consider the next steps, it said in a statement. Athens has raised 5.8 billion euros from state asset sales since 2010. The Hellenic stake, which is being jointly sold by Paneuropean Oil, Industrial Holdings and the government, is valued at about 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion). Hellenic, which exports more than half of its annual output of about 16.5 million tonnes, owns three oil refineries in Greece and also has rights to explore for oil and gas in the country. Workers are opposing the deal, saying Athens is selling off its most precious asset. They staged a three-hour stoppage to protest against the sale
Total to Supply LNG to China
France’s Total said it has signed a 10-year sales and purchase deal with China’s independent gas company Guanghui for annual supply of 0.7 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG).The super-chilled fuel will be sourced from the French company’s global portfolio and supplied into Guanghui’s regasification terminal in Qidong in East China, Total said in a press release.In a separate statement, the Chinese firm said the new gas purchases will serve a growing gas market in Jiangsu province, where demand for the cleaner-burning fuel is forecast to reach 35 billion cubic metres in 2020. The deal was signed between Total and Guanghui International Gas Trading Co Ltd, a unit of Guanghui Energy.Guanghui’s receiving terminal will eventually have annual handling capacity of 3 million tonnes, the firm said, without giving a timeline.Guanghui started operating a 600,000 tonne-per-year receiving terminal in Qidong in mid-2017.China’s imports of LNG could reach 110 billion cubic metres, or about 80 million tonnes a year, by 2025, a senior executive from China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) said.The growth will be driven a stringent environmental policy and an accelerated restructuring of the country’s energy mix, among other factors, Ling Xiao told the LNG2019 conference in Shanghai. “LNG price will become one of the decisive factors for the amount of LNG imports,” he also said in a presentation.China’s LNG imports last year were about 54 million tonnes.
U.S. LNG Producers Offer Alternative PricingU.S. producers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) are wooing buyers with offers to sell gas priced against benchmarks other than U.S. domestic prices, ahead of an expected flood of supplies on global markets this year. The United States, the world’s fastest growing gas exporter thanks to surging output from shale fields, is set to become the world’s third-largest LNG exporter this year, taking on more established suppliers such as Qatar and Australia. U.S. producers only began exporting LNG in early 2016 and typically price their sales against U.S. domestic benchmarks such as Henry Hub. To stand out, at least two developers of new U.S. terminals have signed binding and non-binding deals using alternative pricing, executives said on the sidelines of the LNG2019 conference in Shanghai this week. Tellurian Inc and French oil and gas major Total SA signed a deal that includes both companies entering into a binding agreement for 1.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of LNG from Tellurian, which is developing the Driftwood LNG project in Louisiana. The price was based on Platts Japan Korea Marker (JKM), which is a fast-developing Asian benchmark for LNG though mainly for spot cargoes. Most LNG contracts in Asia are still priced off Brent crude. Tellurian and commodities trader Vitol have also signed a memorandum of understanding for long-term LNG supply priced off JKM. “I believe LNG is moving (towards) a gas index,” said Total’s chief executive Patrick Pouyanne.
Saudi Threatens to Ditch Dollar to Stop ‘NOPEC
’Saudi Arabia is threatening to sell its oil in currencies other than US dollar if Washington passes a bill exposing OPEC members to U.S. antitrust lawsuits, three sources familiar with Saudi energy policy told Reuters. They said the option had been discussed internally by senior Saudi energy officials in recent months. Two of the sources said the plan had been discussed with OPEC members and one source briefed on Saudi oil policy said Riyadh had also communicated the threat to senior U.S. energy officials.The chances of the U.S. bill known as NOPEC coming into force are slim and Saudi Arabia would be unlikely to follow through, but the fact that Riyadh is considering such a drastic step is a sign of the Saudis’ annoyance about potential U.S. legal challenges to OPEC. In the unlikely event Riyadh were to ditch the dollar, it would undermine its status as the world’s main reserve currency, reduce Washington’s clout in global trade and weaken its ability to enforce sanctions on nation states.“The Saudis know they have US dollar as the nuclear option,” one of the sources familiar with the matter said.“The Saudis say: let the Americans pass NOPEC and it would be the U.S. economy that would fall apart,” another source said.No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act (NOPEC), was first introduced in 2000 and aims to remove sovereign immunity from U.S. antitrust law, paving the way for OPEC states to be sued for curbing output in a bid to raise oil prices.