Energean to boost east Mediterranean output - TIMES OF OMAN

April 21, 2018 | 4:21 PM

London: Freshly London-listed Energean Oil & Gas is boosting its Greek output and expects first gas from its Israeli fields in the first quarter of 2021, making it one of the biggest independent energy firms operating in the eastern Mediterranean.

Energean listed last month, raising $460 million to develop two Israeli offshore gas fields, Karish and Tanin, which have potential reserves of up to 2.4 trillion cubic feet of gas and 32.8 million barrels of light oil and condensate.

It also won five more Israeli blocks nearby and plans to publish their contingent resource data in the next few months, Chief Executive Mathios Rigas told Reuters in a phone interview.

Yorktown selling Egypt oil business Merlon -sources - REUTERS

APRIL 20, 2018 / 3:09 PM
Ron Bousso

• Private equity firm hopes to raise up to $400mln
• Citigroup running process, bids expected by July

LONDON, April 20 (Reuters) - Private equity firm Yorktown Partners is selling its Egyptian-focused oil and gas company Merlon International, hoping to raise up to $400 million, two banking sources told Reuters.

Transgaz loses bid for Greece’s grid operator - BUSINESS REVIEW

April 20, 2018 12:08
Sorin Melenciuc 

The consortium led by Spanish company Reganosa, including Romanian state-owned monopoly Transgaz and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), lost the bid for Greece’s grid operator DESFA, Athens accepting a EUR 535 million offer from the rival consortium led by Italy’s Snam, according to Reuters.

DESFA runs a gas transport network by pipelines of 1,459 km in Greece. The winning bidder was a consortium of Italy’s Snam, Spain’s Enagas Internacional and Belgium’s Fluxys.

The sale of a majority stake in DESFA is mandated under Greece’s latest international financial bailout. The Greek government is selling a 31 percent stake in DESFA and Hellenic Petroleum, Greece’s biggest oil refiner, 35 percent.

For Greece is the second attempt to sale the company, after a previous EUR 400 million deal with Azerbaijan’s SOCAR fell through.

For Transgaz, the bid was the first major attempt to step outside Romania, in an area dominated for decades by Russian giant Gazprom, the main gas supplyer of the countries from the region.

Greece accepts Snam-led consortium's offer for gas grid DESFA - REUTERS

APRIL 19, 2018 / 7:30 PM / 2 DAYS AGO

Angeliki Koutantou

• Athens relaunched the sale last year
• Named Snam-led consortium “preferred investor”
• Greece a crossroads for new gas routes, consortium says

ATHENS, April 19 (Reuters) - Greece has accepted a 535 million euro ($662 million) offer from a consortium led by Italy’s Snam for a majority stake in gas grid operator DESFA, naming it the “preferred investor”, its privatisation agency said on Thursday.

DESFA runs a network for transporting gas from the Greek-Bulgarian and Greek-Turkish borders via a 1,459-km (907-mile) pipeline. It also has a liquefied gas terminal facility on an islet off Athens.

Strategically-placed, Greece could represent an important crossroads for the diversification of supplies and new natural gas routes in Europe, the consortium said.

It anticipated the transaction would be finalised in the second half of 2018 after securing approvals, including antitrust clearance.

EGAS, GANOPE sign offshore drilling rig purchase agreement with Toyota - ENTERPRISE

Thursday, 19 April 2018

A string of news from the petroleum industry is worthy of your attention this morning, all stemming from the 9th Mediterranean Offshore Conference, which saw a number of IOCs on Tuesday — including Shell, Eni, and Edison — make commitments to expand and expedite their activities in Egypt:

EGAS and the Ganoub El Wadi Petroleum Holding Company (GANOPE) signed yesterday a USD 600 mn agreement to purchase an offshore drilling rig from Toyota Tsusho, according to an Oil Ministry statement. The rig will be used for oil and gas deepwater exploration in the Mediterranean, Gulf of Suez, and Red Sea.

Schlumberger announced it will invest USD 60 bn in a new data center in a bid to make industry information more accessible, according to Egypt GM Hussein El Ghazzawy. El Molla had signed two agreements with Schlumberger back in February, one each for the data center and a seismic survey of the Gulf of Suez.

ICGB to choose pipe supplier for Greece-Bulgaria gas link in June - SEE NEWS

Apr 19, 2018 13:11 CEST

Mario Tanev / Bulgaria's Ministry of Energy

SOFIA (Bulgaria), April 19 (SeeNews) - The supplier of pipes for the Gas Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (ICGB) project is expected to be selected in June, Bulgaria's energy ministry has said.

The shortlisted candidates will be announced by the end of April, the energy ministry said in a statement following a meeting of energy minister Temenuzhka Petkova with her Greek counterpart Giorgos Stathakis on Wednesday.

European Commission warns Turkey over its aggression toward Cyprus - KATHIMERINI

18.04.2018 : 09:38

The European Commission has warned Turkey that negotiations for EU accession will remain blocked as a result of its hostility towards Cyprus, according to its progress report.

European Commission's annual accession report on Turkey's EU progress said that one chapter has been put on ice until Brussels ascertains that Turkey has fully applied the so-called additional Ankara Protocol and displayed good neighbourly relations without threats.

This binds Turkey to extend recognition to Cyprus and to allow Cypriot shipping to access Turkish ports and Cypriot planes to use its airspace as a precondition for further accession negotiations.

"As long as restrictions remain in place on vessels and aircraft registered in or related to Cyprus or whose last port of call was Cyprus, Turkey will not be in a position to fully implement the acquis relating to this chapter," said the report.

Turkey does not recognise the Republic of Cyprus despite it being a Member of the EU and it is the only country to recognise the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state.

Geopolitical factors to restrict ELPE tender participation - ENERGY PRESS

18/04/2018

Geopolitical factors constraining the range of participants in order to safeguard matters such as national and regional security will inevitably be incorporated into the terms of an international tender offering 50.1 percent of ELPE (Hellenic Petroleum), expected to be announced by TAIPED, the state privatization fund, any day now, possibly even today.

Though the terms to be applied to the ELPE tender remain unclear, Russian, Iranian and Chinese players, for example, stand little chance of emerging as candidates, given the current geopolitical climate in the southeast Meditteranean, polarized by US-Russian tension.

Also, European powers such as Germany, France and Italy have been requesting increasingly strict measures from Brussels for protection of strategically important European enterprises against Chinese acquisitions. ELPE belongs to this category.

Possible EU agreement next? Shell resumes EastMed ops and more from Med Offshore Conference - ENTERPRISE

Wednesday, 18 April 2018

Is this it? Are we going to be the energy export hub to the EU next week? Egypt is expected to sign a new oil and gas agreement with the EU next week, Oil Minister Tarek El Molla said yesterday, without providing further details. While he framed the announcement as a “cooperation agreement,” he added that this is part of plans to turn Egypt into a natural gas export hub for the East Mediterranean basin. Cypriot Foreign Minister Nicos Christodoulides had said earlier this month that Egypt and Cyprus would be ready to sign the contracts for a pipeline “in the near future” and that the different parties involved “are in the process of negotiating the terms of the natural gas sale and the purchase agreements.” The two countries were also waiting to hear back from the EU on their preliminary framework for the agreement as of March.

El Molla also said yesterday that the Oil Ministry is also planning to issue tenders for 10-11 oil and gas exploration blocks, as well as other drilling tenders in the Red Sea by the end of the year, according to Reuters.

Remarks at major industry gathering: The minister’s statements were but the most high-profile of a number of significant sector announcements coming out of the 9th Mediterranean Offshore Conference. Highlights:

Royal Dutch Shell to resume deep-water exploration off Egypt - REUTERS

APRIL 17, 2018 / 12:22 PM

Reporting by Ahmed Ismail, writing by Amina Ismail; editing by Jason Neely

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt - Royal Dutch Shell said it will resume deep-water exploration for oil and gas off Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, Executive Vice President Sami Iskander told a news conference on Tuesday.

Egypt is looking to production from recently discovered fields to halt energy imports by 2019.

A petroleum ministry official said last month that new production at Shell’s [WDDM] field 9B (formerly BG) is expected to reach 350-400 million cubic feet per day by 2019.

Separately, production from the first 3 wells in the field is set to begin in the 2018-2019 fiscal year.

The field is owned by Egypt’s General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC), Malaysia’s Petronas and Shell.

At least one DESFA sale offer believed to exceed €500m - ENERGY PRESS

16/04/2018

At least one of two second-round offers submitted last week by two consortiums participating in an international tender offering 66 percent of DESFA, the natural gas grid operator, exceeds 500 million euros, according to energypress sources.

Such a level, if confirmed, would be well above the tender’s first-round offers and a winning 400 million-euro bid that had been submitted by Azerbaijan’s Socar to a previous tender, also offering 66 percent of DESFA, which was not finalized.

In another bonus, the government appears to have secured Greek State rights for natural gas projects and infrastructure of strategic interest in a shareholders’ agreement to accompany the transfer of DESFA’s 66 percent to a new strategic investor.

Tshuva again fails to delist Delek Energy - GLOBES

16 Apr, 2018 11:53
Kobi Yeshahayou

Delek Group improved its offer, but it still fell short. Market source: The reasons for the rejection are not purely economic.

Another offer to purchase by Delek Group Ltd. (TASE: DLEKG), controlled by Yitzhak Tshuva, for the public's shares in its Delek Energy Systems Ltd. (TASE:DEOL) subsidiary, aimed at delisting it from the TASE, has failed, even though Delek Group improved the cash element the offer. Delek Group, which owns 88.2% of Delek Energy, had to obtain acceptance of its offer from owners of at least 7% of the shares in Delek Energy for the offer to succeed, but owners of only 5.3% of the shares accepted.

A senior capital market source told "Globes," "There is no price at which the offer would have succeeded, among other things because some of the shareholders are making decisions for reasons that are not necessarily economic. There are investors who are in love with this security, and are not selling it for all sorts of reasons, whether because they think that Delek Group is not revealing all of the information it has about Delek Energy, or for other reasons. In my opinion, this security will not be delisted from the TASE, simply because there are enough shareholders whose considerations are not purely economic."