Kuwait Eyes More Investment in Europe
Kuwaiti Oil Minister Ali Al-Omair visited the Kuwait Petroleum Refinery site at Rotterdam and met the management there and inspected the various departments and installations.
Speaking to the Kuwait news agency, KUNA, he underlined the importance of his first visit to the Netherlands and his delight about visiting the refinery.
"We are following one of the major investments for Kuwait in Europe which is at the Rotterdam refinery and hopefully we can succeed in resolving all the problems facing our investments," he said.
The minister praised the young Kuwaitis in the management of the refinery for their hard work and dedication.
Al Omair said he will be meeting with the Dutch foreign affairs minister and the minister of economy tomorrow.
"We hope to have good talks with them regarding Kuwaiti investments in the Netherlands," he said.
"We are looking forward to increasing our investments in Europe and also to overcome all the obstacles that we face," stated Al Omair.
He described Dutch-Kuwaiti relations as "excellent" and noted that the Kuwaiti foreign minister recently visited the Hague to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
"Our foreign minister had good and fruitful talks with the Dutch side and we hope to strengthen our relations," he added.
The minister is accompanied by Nizar Aladsani, head of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, Bakheet Al Rashidi, head of Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI), Khaled Al Mushaileh, acting vice president of KPI Europe, Adnan Al Qallaf Group manager-stakeholder management KPI, Eman Al Sabah, and manager in the oil minister’s office, Khaled Al-Saee.
Kuwait’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Hafeez Al-Ajmi, and advisor at the embassy Ali Althaidi also attended the meetings at the Rotterdam refinery.
The Kuwaiti delegation was welcomed by the managing director at the Kuwait refinery at Rotterdam, Wael Salmeen.
LG, Hyundai Clinch $4b Deals with Turkmenistan
South Korean industrial conglomerates LG International and Hyundai Engineering will build gas processing plants in Turkmenistan worth a combined $4 billion, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said.
"Turkmenistan sees a long-term partner in South Korea. And today we concluded two large-scale agreements worth a total of $4 billion," Berdymukhamedov told journalists after holding talks with his visiting South Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye.
The contract to build two processing plants was signed by Turkmen state gas company Turkmengas, LG International Corp 001120.KS and Hyundai Engineering Co. HYENG.UL following the talks.
"For the first time in the history of our diplomatic relations, the president of South Korea has visited Turkmenistan. We share the opinion with the president of Turkmenistan that we should increase the volume of our mutual trade and investments," Park said through an interpreter.
Berdymukhamedov, who has sweeping powers in his Central Asian nation of 5.5 million, has in recent years overseen rapid economic growth exceeding 10 percent annually, largely on the back of rising natural gas exports to China via a pipeline launched in late 2009.
Shell Offers to Settle Nigeria Oil Spills
Royal Dutch Shell is ready to pay up to 30 million pounds in compensation for two oil spills in Nigeria in 2008 after a London court rejected a larger claim, sources involved in the case said.
Around 11,000 residents of the Bodo community in the Niger Delta represented by law firm Leigh Day appealed in 2011 to a London court for more than 300 million pounds in compensation for the spilling of 500,000 barrels of oil.
The London High Court rejected the claimants' attempts to expand the scope of the compensation, ruling that the pipeline operator could not be held responsible for damage caused by oil theft.
Shell's offer from September 2013 to settle the case for 30 million pounds remained on the table, sources involved in the case said.
A trial is planned to start in May 2015, but Shell urged the claimants to reach a settlement beforehand.
"From the outset, we've accepted responsibility for the two deeply regrettable operational spills in Bodo," Mutiu Sunmonu, Managing Director of the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC), said in a statement.
"We hope the community will now direct their UK legal representatives to stop wasting even more time pursuing enormously exaggerated claims and consider sensible and fair compensation offers," Sunmonu said.
Gazprom to Start China Pipeline in Aug
Russia’s energy giant Gazprom plans to launch the construction of the Power of Siberia pipeline in August for gas deliveries to China, the company said in a statement.
"We have a precise plan of action. All of the responsibilities have been distributed and strict timeframes have been set. Our goal is to make the first weld of the Power of Siberia [pipeline] in August," the statement quoted Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller as saying.
The Power of Siberia is a gas transmission system aimed at delivering gas from the Irkutsk and Yakutia gas production centers to Russia’s Far East and China.
Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a 30-year contract in late May for the sale of Russian gas to China at a volume of 38 billion cubic meters per year with delivery along the eastern route.
The deal is estimated to be worth $400 billion. Russia is planning to invest $55 billion and China around $22 billion in the gas deal.
The gas deal requires the two partners to run additional investment projects to develop the Chayandinskoye and Kovyktinskoye gas fields, build the Power of Siberia gas pipeline in eastern Siberia and an LNG plant in Amur Region.
WB to Ask Oil Companies to Stop Flaring Gas
The World Bank will urge producers of oil to stop flaring natural gas by 2030, saying the amount of fuel wasted in the practice would generate enough power to meet all of Africa’s demand for electricity.
“It will be voluntary but we hope that both companies and countries will see the sense in what we are proposing,” Anita George in the bank’s extractive industry unit said in a Moscow interview. “We are planning to propose it in September.”
The World Bank is leading 33 companies and nations in the Global Gas Flaring Reduction partnership that seeks to shrink the industry custom by 30 percent in the five years to 2017. The gas is pumped from fields when companies drill for oil.
Halting the burning of about 140 billion cubic meters of gas globally every year would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions equivalent to taking about 70 million cars off the roads.
Mexico and Azerbaijan have reduced flaring about 66 percent and 50 percent, respectively, in the past two years, George said. In Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell Plc is investing about $4 billion to reduce flaring from local oil fields.
BP Plc’s biggest flaring occurs at its crude production in the Rumaila oilfield in Iraq, said Bob Dudley, chief executive officer at the London-based company
Canada Sets Conditions on Pipeline to Pacific Ocean
Canada has approved construction of a pipeline to the Pacific Ocean, opening up one of the world's largest oil fields as Washington dithers over another link southward from Alberta's oil sands.
The Northern Gateway project gained momentum after US President Barack Obama delayed a decision on another pipeline -- Keystone XL -- first proposed in 2008 to move Alberta bitumen to refineries along the US Gulf Coast.
The oil conduit from landlocked Alberta to the sea would propel further development of the province's oil sands, unleashing tremendous economic kickbacks for Canadians, Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford has said.
In a statement, the minister said the government accepted an independent review panel's recommendation to approve the project, with 209 conditions to mitigate environmental impacts.
"Moving forward, the proponent (Enbridge) must demonstrate... how it will meet the 209 conditions," Rickford added.
The government's nod is the last major administrative hurdle for the Can$7.9 billion (US$7.3 billion) Northern Gateway project.
The pipeline project itself is the first to be approved to enable Canada to diversify markets for its crude oil.
However, opponents refused to lie down, vowing civil disobedience and court challenges to try to stop it, while opposition New Democratic Party leader Tom Mulcair vowed to kill the project if his party wins elections scheduled for 2015.
Approval is politically risky for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's ruling Conservatives, with 21 Tory MPs seeking re-election in westernmost British Columbia, where most voters oppose the pipeline.