LNG

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has agreed to work with Germany’s largest utility RWE on delivering up to 1 mtpa of LNG for up to 10 years to Germany and other European markets. The envisaged volume corresponds to up to 12 cargoes of LNG and up to 1.4 bcm of natural gas per year, under a framework agreement signed Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Group CEO of ADNOC and chairman of Masdaar and RWE CEO Markus Krebber.

GALP Energia, the Portuguese oil and gas company which recently agreed to sell its 10 percent stake in the Mozambique LNG project, posted higher adjusted second-quarter net profits.

Shell Plc has confirmed its shareholding with four other partners in the new LNG export plant being developed in the United Arab Emirates by Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s (ADNOC) at Al Ruwais.

Technip Energies, the LNG and energy engineers, has signed a long-term joint venture services agreement for one of the world’s largest oil and gas fields in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan.

A South Korean trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates has been signed in Seoul and included a future order for at least six LNG carriers from the UAE and a pledge of $30 billion of investments in Korean industries.

GALP Energia, the Portuguese oil and gas company, has agreed to cash in its 10 percent stake in the Area 4 concession in the Rovuma Basin of Mozambique operated by Italy’s Eni by selling it to Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the main energy operator in the United Arab Emirates.

April 19 (LNGJ) - Intercontinental Exchange, the leading global provider of energy trading platforms for LNG, oil and other commodities and indices, reported record trading activity in Murban crude as ICE Futures Abu Dhabi (IFAD) marked its third anniversary. IFAD and ICE’s Murban futures market was launched in March 2021 with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and nine of the world’s largest energy traders as founding partners.

   ICE said that in the first quarter of 2024, the Murban futures market hit record traded volume of over 1.1 million contracts and in March reached record average daily volume of 21,454 contracts, up 152 percent year-over-year. On April 15, 2024, Murban futures hit a single day volume record with 36,464 contracts traded. “Three years on from launch, we, together with ADNOC and our partners, have built a truly global Murban futures market which sits alongside benchmark crude grades Brent and Midland WTI,” said Gary King, President of ICE Futures Abu Dhabi.

UK major BP and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company have decided not to proceed with a joint offer to take control of NewMed Energy, the Israeli natural gas company with LNG export plans and a supplier of pipeline gas to Israel, Egypt and Jordan.

A statement from NewMed said that the merger process was suspended because of the conflict in Gaza between Israeli military forces and the Hamas terrorist group and would not be proceeding in the near future.

The suspension would remain in force until discussions on an actual transaction resumed or were totally terminated.

“There can be no certainty that discussions will resume or that an agreement will be reached in the future, nor as to the terms of an agreement should one be reached,” explained NewMed.

“The NewMed Partnership will update unitholders of further developments as appropriate,” it added.

Suspension details

NewMed stated that the joint committee looking into the BP-ADNOC deal has agreed “due to the uncertainty created by the external environment” to suspend discussions in relation to the proposed transaction.

BP and ADNOC had previously made a non-binding offer in March 2023 to take NewMed Energy private and out of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange through an acquisition of the free float listed shares and a partial acquisition of a stake still held by Israel's Delek Group.

The transaction would have resulted in BP and ADNOC holding 50 percent of NewMed Energy.

NewMed, a stakeholder with US major Chevron Corp. in the large Leviathan natural gas field offshore Israel, had previously approved budgets for 2023 including gas field development to provide feed gas for a floating LNG export project.

BP and ADNOC had intended to form a new joint venture that would have focused on “gas development in international areas of mutual interest including the East Mediterranean” region.

The proposed BP-ADNOC transaction followed a move by NewMed Energy itself to merge with Capricorn Energy of the UK but the Israelis later withdrew in February 2023 from that bid.

Main assets

The main NewMed asset, the Leviathan gas field, supplies the Israeli domestic market as well as exporting gas by pipelines to Egypt and Jordan.

The Leviathan project shareholders are the NewMed Partnership with 45.34 percent, Chevron subsidiary, Chevron Mediterranean Ltd with 39.66 percent, and Ratio Energies with 15 percent.

NewMed, which announced its name change from Delek Drilling to NewMed Energy in February 2022, also has a stake in the Aphrodite gas field in the offshore economic zone of Cyprus, making it one of the biggest players in the East Med.

Four months after the start of the Gaza conflict BP and ADNOC said in February 2024 that they had formed a joint venture in Egypt that would initially focus on natural gas and would incorporate Egyptian concession stakes held by BP.

That joint venture is expected to be formed in the second half of 2024 and will be 51 percent owned by BP and 49 percent by ADNOC.

The BP-ADNOC Egyptian joint venture was originally planned to be the second phase of cooperation between the two companies in the East Med gas and LNG province after the planned acquisition of the 50 percent stake in Israel’s NewMed.

March 13 (LNGJ) - Abu Dhabi National Oil Company of the United Arab Emirates has issued a limited notice to proceed for early engineering, procurement and construction activities to a joint venture comprising Technip Energies, Japan’s JGC Corp. and UAE-based National Petroleum Construction Co. for the Al-Ruwais LNG export project. The final investment decision for the liquefaction plant is expected later in 2024.

   “The project is set to significantly contribute to the Al Dhafra region’s economy by attracting further investments and creating a vital energy trade gateway in Al-Ruwais Industrial City,” said ADNOC. The liquefaction and export plant will have two liquefaction Trains each with 4.8 million tonnes per annum of output for a total of 9.6 MTPA. Abu Dhabi already operates the Das Island plant with around 6 MTPA of output.

Höegh LNG Holdings Ltd, the owner and operator of 13 LNG vessels including floating storage and regasification (FSRU) units, said the outlook for the FSRU market was expected to remain strong as another terminal plan progressed for the Netherlands in the port of Vlissingen.