(EnergyAsia, August 19, Wednesday) — Singapore may see another player in the bunker business as Switzerland-based Mercuria Energy Trading appears ready to start supplying and trading fuel from a supertanker. The company has leased Ticen Ocean from Titan Petrochemicals Group Ltd for one year and anchored it off southern Malaysian waters. Another trader, Southern Petrochemical...
(EnergyAsia, August 19, Wednesday) — Producers and exporters expect natural gas prices to briefly follow the temporary strength of oil prices despite the supply glut. At their recent meeting in Doha, Qatar, members of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), officials noted that natural gas prices tend to lag behind oil prices by about six...
(EnergyAsia, August 19, Wednesday) — Armed men associated with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) recently attacked the strategic Okan manifold of US major Chevron, eroding the country’s oil production capability. The attack, one of several against oil companies in recent months, has further reduced Nigeria’s all-important oil revenue by 2.2...
(EnergyAsia, August 19, Wednesday) — State-owned China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec) said it refined 86.9 million tonnes of crude oil in the first half of 2009, up 1.82% from the same period last year. The output of diesel, its main product, fell 5.4% to 32.4 million tonnes, but that decline was largely cancelled out...
(EnergyAsia, August 19, Wednesday) — A new report by the Washington DC, US-based World Resources Institute points to human activity as the primary cause of global warming with evidence that climate change impacts are accelerating. The report compiles peer-reviewed research including evidence that melting rates for mountain glaciers around the world doubled between 2004 and...
(EnergyAsia, August 18, Tuesday) — Record high oil prices pushed the income of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) last year to a little more than US$1 trillion, up 35 % from that of the previous year. In 2008, the average price of benchmark US crude oil futures rose to US$99 from US$72...
(EnergyAsia, August 18, Tuesday) — Nigeria’s oil production has fallen to less than 1.6 million barrels per day (b/d) or about half of its production capacity as a result of continuing military conflict in the Niger Delta, the heart of the country’s oil and gas industry. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger...
(EnergyAsia, August 18, Tuesday) — Exxon Mobil Corp and Shell are looking for buyers for their combined 36% stake in New Zealand Refining Co, the operator of the country’s only oil refinery. The US major holds a 19% stake while the Anglo Dutch company has a 17% stake. The move represents attempts by both companies...
(EnergyAsia, August 18, Tuesday) — Northern Pakistan is facing worsening shortages of oil products as the region’s two major refineries, Attock Refinery Limited and Pak-Arab Refining Co (Parco), have slashed production to as low as 30% of capacity. Their reduced production and lower sales to Pakistan State Oil (PSO) has left the state firm with...
(EnergyAsia, August 18, Tuesday) — Thailand’s PTT Aromatics and Refinery (PTTAR) said it will invest US$200 million to upgrade the company’s oil production facilities to meet Euro 4 pollution standards. It is in talks with construction firms for construction work to start later this year on installing facilities that will produce Euro 4 standard fuels. ...
(EnergyAsia, August 18, Tuesday) — Jurong Shipyard Pte Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore’s Sembcorp Marine, said it has been awarded a US$160 million contract by Modec Offshore Production Systems (Singapore) Pte Ltd to convert a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) tanker, the Ohdoh, to a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, which will...
(EnergyAsia, August 18, Tuesday) — State oil and gas company PetroVietnam has applied for a licence to build a fuel depot to serve a chain of retail outlets in the increasingly prosperous northern province of Quang Ninh. The depot in Dam Nha Mac town will be managed by subsidiary PVOil Corp which owns and operates...
(EnergyAsia, August 18, Tuesday) — China’s Ministry of Commerce has granted nine companies the licence to operate as wholesalers of refined oil products. The companies include China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the country’s top offshore oil and gas producer; CNOOC’s sales arm, China National Offshore Oil Zhongjie Petrochemical Co Ltd; and the sales subsidiaries...
(EnergyAsia, August 17, Monday) — PetroChina Co, Asia’s largest oil and gas producer, has moved closer to completing the takeover of Singapore Petroleum Company (SPC), which owns one of the city-state’s three major oil refineries. Independent directors of SPC have recommended that shareholders accept the offer of PetroChina, which earlier acquired Keppel Corp.’s 45.51 %...
(EnergyAsia, August 17, Monday) — Lanka Maritime Services, a unit of Sri Lankan conglomerate John Keells Holdings, said it has expanded its floating storage with the acquisition of an 8,800 DWT double-hull tanker to provide bunkering services at Sri Lanka’s Colombo port. Lanka Maritime Services said it was prompted to acquire the ship because of...
(EnergyAsia, August 17, Monday) — ABB, the Switzerland-based power and automation technology group, said it has won orders worth $28 million from India’s Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company Limited for substations to help improve the efficiency and reliability of the state’s network. The 220kV and 132kV substations will be located in the Nashik, Amravati and...
(EnergyAsia, August 17, Monday) — NXP Semiconductors of the Netherlands said it is partnering Tata BP Solar India Ltd, a joint venture of BP Solar and India’s Tata Power, to jointly develop solar energy solutions. Tata BP intends to use various electronic solutions for solar applications developed by Eindhoven-based NXP. These solutions have been developed...
(EnergyAsia, August 17, Monday) — The solar energy revolution is within reach with module price now poised to reach the parity price of US$1 per watt sometime next year, said Chinese manufacturer QS Solar. This means that electricity generated by solar energy, even without the support of subsidies, will cost less than electricity from the...
(EnergyAsia, August 17, Monday) — The number of jobs in America’s emerging clean energy economy grew nearly two and a half times faster than overall jobs between 1998 and 2007, according to a report released by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Pew said it developed a clear, data-driven definition of the clean energy economy and conducted...
(EnergyAsia, August 17, Monday) — The Ion Exchange Resins business unit of German specialty chemicals group Lanxess AG recently unveiled its premium products for biodiesel production at the 1st Biofuels Roundtable Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The focus was on its ion exchange resin Lewatit GF 202, which a part of the “Lewatit Green Fuels”...
(EnergyAsia, August 17, Monday) — Worldwide sales of biodiesel and ethanol markets are expected to reach US$247 billion by 2020 from US$76 billion in 2010, according to a report from Pike Research, a US market research and consulting firm. Biofuel and ethanol production and consumption are rising on account of government mandates, environmental concerns, technological...
(EnergyAsia, August 14, Friday) — German specialty chemical firm Lanxess said it has decided to postpone the construction of its 400-million-euro butyl rubber facility on Singapore’s Jurong island due to the global economic crisis. (US$1=0.7 euro). The Leverkusen-based company had originally planned for the 100,000-tonne-per-year plant to start up in 2012. “We expect the new...
(EnergyAsia, August 14, Friday) — India’s largest hydropower company, state-run NHPC, said it raised US$1.25 billion through a fully subscribed initial public offering (IPO) on the Mumbai-based National Stock Exchange. The money raised will finance the construction of seven hydropower plants by 2012. At the end of its first trading day last Friday, the company...
(EnergyAsia, August 14, Friday) — A Philippine non-government organisation has asked Japanese prime minister Taro Aso to cancel an agreement between the Philippine government and a UK-based Japanese firm for a 600,000-hectare biodiesel project. In his letter to Mr Aso, Fernando Hicap, chairman of the Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) described the...
(EnergyAsia, August 14, Friday) — Avoiding the most catastrophic impacts of climate change demands that global temperature increase is kept as far below 2°C as possible. This is still possible, but time is running out and we are in danger of overshooting, said Greenpeace. To stay within this limit, global greenhouse gas emissions will need...