(EnergyAsia, July 30, Wednesday) — India’s Essar group will have to wait a bit longer for the Kenyan government to approve its proposed acquisition of a 50% stake in Kenya Petroleum Refineries Ltd (KPRL). Citing energy security concerns, the government has delayed making a decision on Essar’s offer to take over the stakes of Shell...

(EnergyAsia, July 30, Wednesday) — Asiatic Group Holdings Limited, a Singapore-based engineering management specialist, said it will be building a 44-megawatt (MW) hydroelectric power project in Vietnam’s north-eastern Lao Cai province. Asiatic’s wholly-owned Colben Energy Holdings (Vietnam) Limited will pay US$6.3 million for a 51% stake in a newly established joint venture company, Colben Energy...

(EnergyAsia, July 30, Wednesday) — Australia’s Oil Search said it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Papua New Guinea government for the commercialisation of the country’s natural gas resources. The MOU provides a framework for the PNG government and Oil Search to jointly commercialise the substantial discovered PNG gas resource that is...

(EnergyAsia, July 30, Wednesday) — New Zealand’s Contact Energy said it is investigating a new wind farm project on the remote Puketoi Range near Dannevirke in Southern Hawke’s Bay. The proposed 177MW Waitahora wind farm would cost around NZ$500 million to develop. Its 65 turbines would generate enough clean, renewable electricity to power up to...

(EnergyAsia, July 30, Wednesday) — OPEC’s oil export earnings are set to rise to a new record exceeding US$1.251 trillion this year, about US$73 billion more than previously estimated. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said the cartel’s net oil export earnings are expected to surge 86% this year on the back of record-high oil...

branching out into third-party logistics services.   Subsidiary Essar Shipping Ports and Logistics (ESPLL) owns a range of ports, terminals and logistics facilities that are currently used to service the group’s other subsidiaries, Essar Steel, Essar Oil and Essar Power. The group plans to open up those assets and services to external clients, mostly oil...

jointly invest in a proposed 300,000 b/d refinery in Ecuador.   Ecuador President Rafael Correa said Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA and PetroEcuador are open to the idea of inviting Chinese and Iranian participation in what could become South America’s largest refinery when it is completed in 2013. PetroEcuador has a 51% stake in the project with...

the progress of each of the G8 countries toward addressing climate change. The report, ‘G8 Climate Scorecards 2008’, reveals that the US can make substantial progress on the climate front by improving energy efficiency and increasing research and development funding for energy programmes. The scorecards report ranks the G8 countries – US, UK, Canada, France,...

controlling interest in Karachi, Pakistan-based DHA Cogen Limited (DCL).   AEI said it has the right to hold up to 52.99% of DCL’s shares, but declined to reveal the full terms of the transaction. The transaction strengthens AEI’s overall Asian presence. It recently acquired Luoyang Yuneng Sunshine Cogeneration Co Ltd in China, and the gas distribution...

million peso to build an oil products storage and blending terminal in Davao city to serve the southern province of Mindanao. (US$1=50 peso). Insular Oil will build the terminal on a 45,300-sq m waterfront plot which it bought from Herma Corp last July. Manila’s Board of Investments has given its approval and also granted Insular...

a post-combustion-capture (PCC) pilot plant at the Loy Yang Power Station in Victoria state’s Latrobe Valley. CSIRO, the country’s leading science agency, said the milestone followed the Garnaut Report’s recognition that Australia has an important role to play in developing low emission coal technologies such as PCC. The 10.5 metre-high pilot plant is designed to...

investments and even shut down existing capacity if the government goes ahead with its planned emissions trading regime. The country’s three major refiners, Caltex, Shell and ExxonMobil, said they would be saddled with huge extra costs without any compensation or support from the government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. At the same time, the refiners...

production capacity is not growing as fast domestc demand. The prospects of a crisis have been highlighted by recent instances of diesel supply problems in several major cities including Chennai and Bangalore. Diesel demand is rising by some 25% per year but the diesel capacity at the country’s refineries is growing by around 15% per...

recently hit by diesel and gasoline shortages that are expected to persist for the rest of the year. The situation could worsen in the coming weeks with stocks running out completely and possibility that the crisis could spread to other cities, said Indian oil executives. Dealers blame India’s state oil marketing firms for the problem,...

begun building new fuel tanks to replace its ageing Bula oil depot in General Santos City which is scheduled to close before the year end. As a result, its customers in the Socksargen area would not be affected by Bula’s closure, said the company’s vice president for supply and operations Mon Antiporta. He said the...

million to expand its resin production capacity on Jurong Island that could make specialty films for solar PV panels. The company, which has made Singapore its Asia-Pacific hub, said a new 15,000-tonne-per-year polyvinyl butyral resin (PVB) resin plant will compliment an existing 40,000-t/y polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) resin plant. Chairman Yasuaki Wakui said the company will...

releasing crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to bring down the price of oil. Despite the backing of the airline industry and consumers in the country, the Democrat-controlled House failed to muster the two-third majority required to force President Bush to release 10% of the 700 million barrels of crude from the emergency...

depots and port to serve two refineries that are being planned for Vietnam’s central provinces of Quang Nai and Thanh Hoa. The depots and port, owned and operated by a subsidiary of state-owned PetroVietnam. Built on a 7.2-hectare plot, the complex’s depots in the first phase can store up to 7,000 cubic metres of diesel...

hedge purchase and gas supply agreement with the Braemar 2 Partnership that will support the supply of electricity products to its customers in Queensland state. Braemer 2 is equally owned by ERM Power and Arrow Energy.   The final agreements with the partnership support the financial close and development of a second 450 MW open...

Guangdong province is lobbying China’s central government to build a new crude oil storage terminal in the oil-petrochemical city of Huizhou.   The provincial government is also interested to establish its own oil products stockpile in Shenzhen near Hong Kong. The 1.3-billion-yuan terminal could store up to 800,000 tons of products. Construction of the 6-billion-yuan...

separate one-year leasing contracts with two leading oil trading companies for the entire 240,000 dwt storage capacity of Titan Chios, one of its floating storage units located at the Malaysian port of Tanjung Pelepas in Johor, near Singapore. Traders actively use floating storage in Singapore and Malaysia to support their spot trading and blending of...

diminishing hydrocarbon reserves could hurt the long-term programmes and profitability of Malaysian state energy company Petronas, said stock analyst Aseambankers. For the last financial year to March 31 2008, Petronas was able to replace only half its hydrocarbon reserves, due largely to the rapid depletion of international fields. Its reinvestment profit ratio of 29% remains...

consumers in general are sharply reducing fuel consumption in response to the recent record breaking rise in oil prices.   But this has been put into doubt by Antoine Half, an analyst with US-based NewEdge Commodities, who said the size of oil demand destruction in the US could well be exaggerated. Calling it a mirage,...