GLOBAL OFFSHORE UPDATE

Facing the likelihood of its first full-year economic contraction in 25 years, Nigeria is contemplating a rare sale of stakes in the oil and gas industry, the country’s biggest foreign-exchange earner. President Muhammadu Buhari’s economic advisers are working on a plan “to generate immediate large injection of funds into the economy through asset sales, advance payment for license rounds, infrastructure concessioning,” to help deal with the slump in crude revenue, Budget Minister Udoma Udo Udoma said in a Sept. 24 statement. The ministry of Petroleum Resources is examining what energy assets could be sold, Udoma’s spokesman, James Akpandem, said last week. Battered by low oil prices and a dearth of foreign investment, Nigeria’s economy will probably shrink in 2016 for the first time in 25 years, according to the International Monetary Fund, which forecasts a 1.8% contraction. A 15-month currency peg, fuel and power shortages and a slump in crude production, have cut output. ...

A Nigerian court will next week begins hearing two suits instituted by government to recover a total of $635m from two multinational oil companies, Total and Agip as the cost of the difference between the amount of crude oil the companies lifted and the quantity they declared. In the two cases to be presided over by Justice Olatoregun Isola, Nigeria is asking Total E&P and Nigeria Agip Oil Company to pay the sum of $490,517,280 and $145,848,102 respectively as costs of undeclared or under-declared crude oil they exported from Nigeria. In the statement of claim filed before the court accompanied by the sworn affidavit of three United States of America, USA based professionals, the Federal Government of Nigeria alleged that sometime in 2014, it realised there was a decline in the revenue derived by it from the exportation of crude oil. This, the government said, necessitated an intelligent based gathering of data, which showed that part of the major reasons for the decline ...

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Nigerian police have freed 14 kidnapped oil workers in the restive southern Niger Delta region, which has been hit by a series of militant attacks on oil and gas facilities, police said on Sunday. Kidnapping for ransom is a common problem in some parts of Nigeria and the southern Delta energy hub has seen an increase in crime since the start of attacks by militants calling for more oil wealth to go to the impoverished region. Gunmen seized the 14 workers at the start of the month on a road between the towns of Omoku and Elele, around 50 km (30 miles) from the city of Port Harcourt, Rivers state. The workers are employees of Nigerian oil company Nestoil. "We secured their release in batches. Five were released yesterday while seven were released in the early hours of today," said Nnamdi Omoni, spokesman for police in Rivers state. The remaining two had been released earlier. "As a result of our pressure on the kidnapp...

China Leads the Planet in CO2 Emissions, but Persian Gulf States Lead on Per Capita Basis According to the World Bank’s current data, China was the leading emitter of carbon dioxide in 2011, outstripping the CO2 emitted by the U.S., India, and Russia combined. This should come as no surprise, as a country’s carbon emissions generally have a positive relationship to both its population and level of industrial activity. The opposite is seen on a per capita basis, where China and India have posted the lowest numbers. Small, energy intensive Persian Gulf emitters Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar have posted the highest levels per capita. The chart below shows total and per capita emissions of CO2 on a country basis, breaking total country emissions out by fuel of origin. It is the World Bank’s snapshot in 2011. Use of fossil energy for transportation and electricity generation accounts for the lion’s share of emissions caused by human activity, al...

The new OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out with crude only production numbers for August 2016. All charts are through August 2016. OPEC crude only production reached 33,237,000 barrels per day in August. This includes Gabon. Algeria is in slow decline. Angola seems to be holding steady. Ecuador was sharply down in August but seems to be holding steady for the last two years. Gabon has been added to OPEC but their production is so low it will have little effect one way or the other. Iran’s increase since sanctions were lifted has slowed to a crawl. There are other problems on the horizon for Iran. They are talking about changing all their oil field contracts to “buy back” contracts. That is they want the option to nationalize all everything. This will likely cause a mass exodus of foreign oil companies from Iran and hit their production considerably. Kuwait has recovered from the problems they had in April. I expect their production ...

Maersk Drilling’s jack-up rig Mærsk Gallant has won a $24m contract from Maersk Oil for around 230 days of work in UK waters of the North Sea. The contract is expected to commence in February 2017 and will comprise the plugging and abandonment of the Leadon and James subsea oilfields. “Despite an extremely challenging market, I am glad to say that Maersk Drilling is still able to secure new contracts for our rigs. By focusing on operational excellence and technical problem solving, we strive to always be a trusted and value-adding partner for our customers,” Michael Reimer, Maersk Drilling’s head of global sales, said in a release. Mærsk Gallant is currently on contract with Total E&P Norge, which is scheduled for completion soon.

Subsea 7 said it is still reviewing its lease opportunities almost a year after it beginning downsizing its staff and closing its West Campus building.  The company revealed in October last year it would be downsizing its Aberdeenshire office as it looked to streamline costs during the oil price decline. Instead, the firm said it would “optimise” its other buildings. A spokeswoman for the company said most staff had now been moved from the West Campus and moved to both the East Campus and its Greenwell site. Subsea 7 would not confirm how many staff members the move had affected. A spokeswoman said the firm was “actively reviewing lease opportunities”. Subsea 7 currently has its east and west complex as well as its workshop and sports centre based in Westhill. The Oslo-listed company does not own the West Campus building, but had been leasing it out. A sign offering the leased spaced can be seen outside of its current premises. Last year, the offshore service giant an...

Subsea 7 has started formal one-to-one consultations with hundreds of staff in Aberdeen. The move comes after the company revealed further plans for global resizing and reduction earlier this year. The company is expected to cut 430 of its UK jobs by the end of the first quarter of next year. It’s understood an estimated 230 roles could go in Aberdeen. Staff were reportedly told of the move in July. It comes on the same day it was was revealed the company is still looking to lease out its West Campus in Aberdeenshire almost a year after it began to move staff across to other buildings. Subsea 7 currently employs 1,500 people in the UK. The company said it aims to further reduce its headcount from about 8,000 by early 2017, down from a current level of 9,200.

DATA obtained from the United States, US, Energy Information Administration, EIA, has put the continued decline of employment in the oil and natural gas production across the world at 26 percent between 2014 and 2016.  The report, which captured between October 2014 and May 2016, stated that employment in oil and gas production reached a hight of 538,000 jobs in October 2014, but since then had declined by 26 percent, a loss of more than 142,000 jobs. It will be recalled that in Nigeria, there had been alarming rate of job cuts in the petroleum sector over the downturn in crude oil price at the International market and the attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta region. As a result, the operations and earnings of oil companies dropped sharply, as recent report by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, puts the country’s daily crude production losses at 500,000 barrels per day, with production averaging 1.4 million barrels per day, mb/d as against the 1.9m...

US major Chevron has signed a binding LNG sale purchase agreement with ENN LNG Trading Company for the delivery of the fuel to China from its global supply portfolio. In a statement August 29, the company said the Chinese gas distributor would receive 0.65mn metric tons (mt)/yr of LNG over 10 years, with the first delivery expected to start in 2018 or the first half of 2019. One of China’s biggest gas distributors, ENN operates in 150 cities across 17 provinces and autonomous regions, with over 12mn residential and 56,000 industrial/commercial customers. ENN’s Zhoushan LNG receiving terminal is being constructed and expected to be in operation by 2018.                            ENN's fuel station (Credit: ENN)