Saudi Arabia - joining the dots

A series of blog entries exploring Saudi Arabia's role in the oil markets with a brief look at the history of the royal family and politics that dictate and influence the Kingdom's oil policy

Tuesday, 29 January 2019

UK North Sea gets shot in the arm with Glengorm

CNOOC, Total and Edison have made one of the biggest finds in the UK North Sea in recent years. The Glengorm discovery is estimated to contain recoverable resources of 250mmboe which is even bigger than Total’s recent success in the West of Shetlands at Glendronach which had 1tcf of gas (c.160mmboe). Glengorm sits on licence P2215 and in the vicinity of both the Culzean and Elgin & Franklin gas fields which could act as future hosts for Glengorm. Glengorm...

Thursday, 24 January 2019

Premier success at Zama

Premier and operator Talos have announced the successful appraisal of Zama-2 offshore Mexico. This is the second well on the Zama field, following the initial discovery at Zama-1 in 2017, and reaffirms the massive 600mmbbl oil discovery. The well penetrated 152m of net pay with a high net-to-gross of 73% (vs. Zama-1 of 63%). This suggests potential resource upside and could see resource estimates being upgraded as the appraisal campaign continues. Zama-2...

Monday, 21 January 2019

Genel grows in Kurdistan

Genel is acquiring interests in the Chevron operated Sarta and Qara Dagh blocks. Genel will acquire a 30% interest in Sarta and will pay 50% of the field development costs until a specific production target is reached; there will also be a production milestone contingent payment – total spend by Genel is estimated at USD60 million. Chevron will retain a 50% interest and the KRG holds the remaining 2% interest which is carried by the oil companies....

Thursday, 10 January 2019

Saudi Arabia announces upgrade to oil and gas reserve base

The Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources of Saudi Arabia has announced an upward revision to the Kingdom's proven oil and gas reserves, following an independent certification of oil and gas reserves in Saudi Aramco's concession area conducted by leading consultants DeGolyer and MacNaughton (D&M). The Kingdom previously announced that oil and gas reserves as of 31 December 2017 were 266.3 billion barrels of oil and 307.9 trillion standard cubic feet of gas respectively. Of these, the estimated proven oil and gas reserves in Saudi...

Sunday, 6 January 2019

Valeura: Turkey's new gas supplier

Valeura continues to make good progress in Turkey where the company announced a technical success at the Inanli-1 well in November. The well continues to be tested into 2019. Turkey is structurally short gas, importing gas by pipeline and LNG - LNG regasification capacity is 12bcm/year with cargoes from Algeria, Nigeria and the Middle East. Domestic gas production is therefore long awaited and with Valeura owning the local pipeline network around its licence areas, it is in a good position to start supplying the grid once it is in a position to...

Saturday, 5 January 2019

US resource play map

Reference map of major US L48 resource pl...