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Oil and Gas Insight provides oil and gas market intelligence, trend analysis and forecasts for the oil and gas industry across the USA, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central, Eastern, South East and Western Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
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Above Ground Competition Pushes Regulatory Overhaul (Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Insight)
Myanmar's auction of 30 offshore blocks promises to be a success, while at the same time, neighbouring Bangladesh's most recent offshore round failed to attract more than two bidders. Although, Bangladesh has since entered a process to revamp its production sharing contract (PSC) model, we do not believe that this overhaul will be sufficient to overcome Myanmar's supremacy in terms of its above-ground business environment competition. Myanmar benefits from better licensing terms, a greater commitment to transparency and stronger investor sentiment due to an anticipated economic boom.
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Sinopec Asks For Acreage As Islands Continue Oil Hunt (Middle East & Africa Oil and Gas Insight)
Sinopec subsidiary Sinoangol's interest in offshore acreage in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of São Tomé and Príncipe is welcome news amid exploration challenges and the withdrawals of foreign players which have seen the country's hopes of oil production dashed. Sustaining interest from larger players will be key to delivering long-delayed first oil from the prospective, but unproven, waters of the island nation.
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Yamal-Europe 2 Faces Political Test (Emerging Europe Oil and Gas Insight)
The dismissal of Treasury Minister Mikolaj Budzanowski for failing to prevent state-owned PGNiG from agreeing to study the expansion of the Yamal-Europe pipeline with Gazprom highlights the political opposition within Poland to increasing Russia's gas supply options into Europe. This could thwart Russia's plan to preserve its gas dominance in Europe.
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Rosneft Ups The Ante On LNG Export Policy (Emerging Europe Oil and Gas Insight)
Rosneft's unilateral move to push forward with a LNG export project at Sakhalin is an overt challenge to Russia's restrictive gas export policy, which reserves gas export rights solely for Gazprom. The need to support state coffers with revenues from gas sales could force the government to relent on its position in order to expand Russia's presence in the growing Asian LNG market, though any liberalisation of its gas export policy will likely be limited in the short-term.
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Refinery Compromise: A Small Victory For Upstream Development (Middle East & Africa Oil and Gas Insight)
BMI View: Uganda's decision to accept plans for a smaller refinery project is a victory for Total and its partners, whose upstream development plans had previously been held hostage to an agreement to invest in a 200,000b/d refinery.
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Petronas Gambles On LNG (Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Insight)
Petronas' plan to expand its domestic LNG production capacity is indicative of a shift towards LNG within its portfolio as it seeks to capture the opportunities afforded by expected growth in the global LNG market. Its limitations lie in the availability of gas to feed its LNG plants, though results from exploration appear to be supportive of this domestic expansion.
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Shale May Help Stem Growing Gas Shortfall (Middle East & Africa Oil and Gas Insight)
BMI View: Kuwait may be set to join its other resource-rich neighbours and bid to explore its shale gas potential. Given a preference for reserving oil for export rather than power generation, new supplies of gas will be needed; unlocking unconventional deposits would reduce the country's import burden, which is currently set to grow over our forecast period.
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Protests, Clashes Underscore Forecast For Limited Gains (Middle East & Africa Oil and Gas Insight)
BMI View: Protests and militant clashes only reinforce our forecast for limited gains in Libya's oil production. While the country has abundant untapped below-ground potential, above-ground risks -reflected in political uncertainty, growing willingness by oil sector workers to disrupt operations to push for better compensation, and a poor security environment - remain the most compelling trends in our outlook for the country's oil sector.
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Scarborough Supports FLNG Take-Off (Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Insight)
BMI View: ExxonMobil and BHP Billiton are turning to the floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) option to monetise gas from the large but remote Scarborough field. It is a testament to the growing appeal of FLNG - a view we had previously highlighted- which could prove to be more cost effective and help companies hedge against the risks of cost blowouts that are becoming increasingly frequent in Australia's LNG development. Such plans could face local opposition, however, as investment could bring minimal economic benefits to the local community.
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Moving Closer To The East (Emerging Europe Oil and Gas Insight)
BMI View: Chinese President Xi Jinping's summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has produced remarkable results - not only has Russia agreed to double its crude oil supply to China, progress is finally being made in bringing the two countries closer towards a gas supply agreement. Also on the table during the summit is Chinese involvement in Russia's upstream segment - both onshore and offshore in the Russian Arctic, to which access has been elusive for non-Russian state-owned companies. For China - one of the world's largest energy consumers - and Russia - one of the world's largest energy producers - there is a harmony of interests to bring the two into closer cooperation. However, these agreements are also as much about politics as they are about economics, and reflect the primacy of political concerns in these countries' decisions regarding policies towards the oil and gas industry.
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