Conoco Canada Resources Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Conoco Inc, and Gulf Indonesia Resources Limited said that the offering period of Conoco Canada’s tender offer for all the outstanding shares of Gulf Indonesia not owned by Conoco Canada expired on July 30. During the subsequent offering period, 6,117,210 shares of Gulf Indonesia were tendered...

JAKARTA (AFX-ASIA) – Karaha Bodas Co (KBC), the former partner of state oil and gas firm Pertamina, said it received US$75 million through an insurance claim for the companies’ failed joint venture, the Jakarta Post reported, citing Karaha spokesman Mohammad Saleh. The insurance claim to Lloyd’s of London follows the suspension of their geothermal power...

A six-member consortium led by state-owned Japan National Oil Corp will jointly begin operations of a gas-to-liquids pilot plant in Tomakomai on Hokkaido island. The plant has the capacity to produce 1.1 kiloliters of liquid fuel per day. JNOC, Cosmo Oil Co., Nippon Steel Corp., Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., Chiyoda Corp. and Inpex Corp. are...

BEIJING (AFX-ASIA) – PetroChina will invest US$361 to 482 million to buy or build another 1,500 gas stations this year, Lin Qingshan, vice president and refining and marketing head said. Mr Lin told the Xinhua news agency in an interview that 30-40% of the plan has been completed. By the end of last year, PetroChina’s...

JAKARTA (AFX-ASIA) – US-based Karaha Bodas Co has rejected allegations by Indonesian government auditors that it misrepresented the cost of building geothermal power plants in Java, which are at the centre of a protracted legal battle between itself and state-owned oil and gas firm Pertamina. Karaha said its expenditure on the joint venture project exceeded...

DENVER (AFX) – Vinton Allen & Vellone PC and Berger & Montague PC filed suit against Exxon Mobil Corp on behalf of a former employee and others similarly situated whose severance benefits the company had allegedly denied. The complaint alleged that Exxon Mobil arbitrarily denied severance benefits to plaintiff and hundreds of other former employees...

Australia’s new AGL electricity product has been certified Greenhouse Friendly. “I am delighted that AGL’s product is the third to pass the comprehensive assessment for Greenhouse Friendly certification, joining BP ‘Ultimate’ premium unleaded fuel and BP’s range of commercial fuels sold under its Global Choice label,” said David Kemp, the Minister for the Environment and...

Singapore suffered a major power cut yesterday following a disruption to supply of Indonesian natural gas to seven of its nine gas-fired power plants which represented nearly a third of the country’s peak capacity load. The power cut, the first in 10 years, hit several parts of the island for 88 minutes after 1,550-megawatt of...

Caltex Australia Limited last week announced the successful completion of an issue equivalent to US$200 million of unsecured senior notes into the US traditional private placement market in New York. The private placement included three tranches comprising 5, 7 and 10 year maturities, with the 5 and 7 year tranches raised in US dollars and...

Bangladesh’s government is planning to rationalise the country’s power tariff, with the aim of reducing the price gap between rural and urban consumers. Disclosing this at a recent seminar on power sector reforms in Bangladesh, State Minister for Power Iqbal Hasan Mahmood said rural consumers are paying a higher rate for their electricity compared with...

JAKARTA (AFX-ASIA) – PT Medco Energi Internasional said a weaker oil price capped first quarter sales growth to just over 10%, as it partially offsets the impact of higher production. The average oil price for the period was US$20.5 per barrel compared to US$25.7 a year earlier. “That limited our sales growth, even though our...

Australia’s BHP Billiton has appointed David Munro as vice president of strategy and business development from September 1. He is currently president of BHP Billiton’s aluminium division. Mr Munro, who will operate in London, will report to Chip Goodyear, executive director and chief development officer. Mr Goodyear said: “Dave’s understanding of our industry, his strong...

MANILA (AFX-ASIA) – Petron Corp is “cautiously optimistic” about its earnings prospects for the full year, with demand for oil products remaining soft, company president and chief executive officer Motassim Al-Ma’ashouq said. Petron last week reporteday a net profit of 1.24 billion pesos in the first half, against the year-ago 673 million, with sales at...

Iran’s Oil Ministry is planning to launch its own oil and energy news agency, SHANA. Akbar Nematollahi, the ministry’s PR department director general, told local reporters that SHANA aims to be the exclusive channel for disseminating information on the country’s the oil and gas industry. He did not say when the agency will begin operations...

TOKYO (AFX-ASIA) – Oil distributors will sharply consolidate their sales subsidiaries that operate gas stations on the back of intensifying price competition due to an increase in the number of self-service outlets, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported, without citing sources. Industry leader Nippon Oil Corp will reduce its sales subsidiaries to five from 14 within...

Brunei’s main engineering contractors are aiming to land contracts associated with the proposed US$7 billion Trans-ASEAN gas pipeline project that was endorsed at last month’s 20th ministerial meeting in Bali in Indonesia. The energy ministers of the 10-member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed a memorandum of understanding to advance the...

JAKARTA (AFX-ASIA) – Government financial audit agencies have accused US-based Karaha Bodas Co of misrepresenting the cost of building a geothermal power plant in Java, which is at the centre of a protracted legal battle between Karaha and Indonesia’s state-owned oil and gas firm Pertamina. A government audit shows Karaha has been inconsistent in its...

Australia’s upstream company Bounty Oil issued the following update last week: In the second quarter, the Woodada gas field, located onshore 280 kilometres north of Perth, Western Australia, produced 305,372 Gj of natural gas and 256 barrels of condensate for sales to contracted customers. The average daily production of natural gas for the quarter was...

MANILA (AFX-ASIA) – Energy Secretary Vince Perez said US-based Rock International Inc is seeking to join a consortium of local companies to explore oil and gas prospects in Palawan, southwest of Manila. Mr Perez said Rock International has applied to invest in Service Contract 6-A currently held by a group led by Philodrill Corp. It...

MANILA (AFX-ASIA) – Petron Corp said its net profit almost doubled to 1.24 billion pesos in the six months to June against 673 million a year earlier despite a drop in sales. (US$1=50 peso). Petron said it posted a net profit of 583 million pesos in the second quarter against 210 million peso a year...

WASHINGTON (AFX) – The fallout from the Enron Corp and WorldCom Inc scandals will cost the US economy an estimated US37 to $42 billion this year, according to a Brookings Institution study. The study said much of the losses will come from stock declines that reduce the so-called “wealth effect” and end up impacting GDP....

Gas from offshore northern Australia will be essential in meeting medium term domestic gas demand price-competitively, the Australian Gas Association (AGA) and Australian Pipeline Industry Association (APIA) said at an industry meeting in Canberra last month. The associations said they gave their comments at the meeting organised by the Northern Territory government as part of...

Kuantan Port is to soon open the first 200 metres of a 400-metre dedicated container berth, Malaysia’s first on the South China Sea side of its peninsula, according Schednet citing the port’s latest quarterly publication. No date has been given for the opening, but Mohamed Awang Tera, managing director of the Kuantan Port Consortium (KPC),...

JAKARTA (AFX-ASIA) – The East Kalimantan government is dropping an attachment order on shares in PT Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC) — a 50:50 joint venture between BP PLC and Rio Tinto PLC — to facilitate the sale of a 51% stake in KPC, a lawyer for the regional government said. Didi Dermawan, partner with Dermawan...

India’s Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) has reported a 9.91% increase in net profit to Rs 2.45 billion for the quarter ended 30 June 2002. VANS Business News said that the company’s net sales were up 9.2% to Rs 110.8 billion (US$2.3 billion) while its other income almost doubled to Rs 608 million (US$12.6 million)....