OPEC news

• Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih visited Kazakhstan to attend Expo 2017 in Astana. Over two days, he spoke to the media and assured reporters that OPEC strategy will bear fruit soon and oil inventories will fall over the coming three or four months. He also said that the diplomatic rift in the Gulf would not affect the deal OPEC recently struck with producers outside the group including Russia. Saudi exports to the US fell recently, Energy Information Administration (EIA) data showed but Al-Falih said Saudi Arabia planned to grow exports to the US in the long-term as “today the US is well supplied.”
• Iraq, the world’s third-biggest crude exporter, wants to limit its dependence on imports to meet local demand for fuel. The country plans to triple its refining capacity to 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2021, Deputy Oil Minister Fayyad Al-Nima told Bloomberg during an interview in Baghdad on June 9. The increase will not include Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. The country spends more than $2 billion per year importing gasoline and gas oil, he said. On June 11, the Iraqi Oil Ministry said that Basra Oil Co. is upgrading the Khor Al-Amaya oil terminal, with the aim of boosting its export capacity to 1 million bpd in next few years from 250,000 bpd now. The upgrade will include new pipelines, pumping stations and tanks with the capacity to store more than 600,000 barrels of crude, the ministry said in the statement, citing Kareem Hattab, deputy minister for upstream affairs.
• Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), the Nigerian subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, declared force majeure on exports of Nigeria’s Bonny Light crude oil following a leak on the Trans Niger Pipeline due to a hole in the pipeline made by an by an unknown person.
• Libya restarted production at its biggest oil field, Sharara, after halting it for around two days. The National Oil Co. (NOC) of Libya aims to restore output at the field within three days, the company said in a statement on its website on June 9. Libyan output had risen this year to more than 800,000 bpd before protests over the death of a worker closed the field on June 7. The field was producing 270,000 bpd before the stoppage, according to NOC, one of the joint venture partners that operate the field along with Spain Repsol and French Total SA, Austria OMV AG and Norway’s Statoil ASA.

Source: Arab News