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Iran Oil Boost on Hold to 2016 as Nuclear Inspectors Go to Work

Global oil markets won’t feel the real impact of Iran’s historic deal with world powers until 2016 as sanctions remain in place while nuclear inspectors go to work, said banks including Citigroup Inc., UBS Group AG and Commerzbank AG. OPEC’s fourth-largest member won’t achieve a crude-export boost of more than 500,000 barrels a day, or about 50 percent, until next year as Iran’s compliance with curbs on its nuclear program is verified, the banks say. The nation will probably choose to gradually increase exports once sanctions are lifted, rather than risk lower prices by rapidly pushing crude into an oversupplied market, according to the International Energy Agency . It will be a long and winding road before Iranian oil returns to the market The agreement between Iran and six world powers will eventually lift restrictions that have halved its crude exports, provided the Persian Gulf nation removes nuclear centrifuges […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iran’s Supreme Leader Is Wild Card in Nuclear Deal

VIENNA—It wasn’t until American negotiators were close to a nuclear deal with Iran that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry turned to his Iranian counterpart and asked about the wild card. “Do you have the mandate of the Supreme Leader?” Mr. Kerry asked, referring to Tehran’s paramount political figure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said he was confident he did. The exchange, described by U.S. aides accompanying Mr. Kerry, was both a breakthrough in the final wrenching days of negotiations and a warning of the challenges that lie ahead if the deal is to be successfully implemented. Throughout two years of negotiations, Mr. Khamenei was the ghost in the machine. U.S. officials could never be fully certain he was on board—indeed, they never spoke to him directly, one Kerry aide said—and he repeatedly blindsided participants on both sides. Through the final hours of talks, he continued […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iran Accord’s Complexity Shows Impact of Bipartisan Letter

Photo Iran’s nuclear reactor in Arak, about 150 miles southwest of Tehran, will be redesigned to no longer produce two bombs worth of weapons-grade plutonium every year. Credit Hamid Foroutan/Iranian Students News Agency, via Associated Press A bipartisan group of nuclear and Middle East experts, including five of President Obama ’s former senior advisers on Iran, wrote a public letter last month describing the emerging nuclear deal with Iran as weak. They called for a number of improvements, and described the strengthening as a bare-minimum requirement to win their support for the complicated accord. The letter was widely seen as laying down standards that, if unmet, could rally enough support in Congress to kill the deal. As unveiled Tuesday in Vienna, the accord runs to 109 pages of fine print , long lists and paragraph after paragraph of mind-numbing jargon. Even so, many of the new particulars bear on […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Nigeria: Shell Fixes Trans Forcados Pipeline, Resumes Crude Oil Export

Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, yesterday, lifted its more than two months force majeure on exports of Nigeria’s Forcados crude oil stream, following the repair of the Trans Forcados Pipeline. According to a statement by the company, the Joint Venture had earlier declared force majeure on the evening on May 5 following a series of leaks in the Trans Forcados pipeline that brings the oil to the export terminal. The Trans Forcados pipeline has a capacity of 150,000 barrels per day. Specifically, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC, a subsidiary of the NNPC, uses the pipeline to transport around 11,000 barrel per day of crude and 6.5 million cubic feet of gas per day, while Seplat Petroleum uses the pipeline to transport its over 60,000 barrel per day of crude oil output. Despite the fact that the bigger, 28-inch and 48-inch sections of the pipeline are operated by Shell, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Pipeline problems hamper exports via Turkey

The original start of the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline in Kirkuk. (BEN LANDO/Iraq Oil Report) As the cash-starved Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) pushes to increase oil exports to Turkey, it faces not only political and legal complications from its disputes with Baghdad, but also operational problems with the Turkish pipeline that carries oil to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.Pipeline outages on the Turkish side of the border have prevented about $509 million worth of Iraqi oil from being sold through the first half of this year, according to an Iraq Oil Report analysis of figu… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up for a free trial .

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Venezuela expands oil blending scheme with Nigeria crude buys: traders

An oil tank is seen at PDVSA’s Jose Antonio Anzoategui industrial complex in the state of Anzoategui April 15, 2015. Venezuelan state-run oil company PDVSA has bought two 1-million barrel cargoes of Nigerian crude from Royal Dutch Shell in the past month to be used as diluents for its extra heavy oil, traders told Reuters. Venezuela, which has the world’s largest crude reserves, began importing a variety of crudes for the first time last year, using them to dilute the OPEC nation’s heavy grades in order to reduce costs and create better blends for customers. PDVSA imported some 4 million barrels of Algerian Saharan Blend crude from October to January under a supply contract with state-owned Sonatrach during the maintenance of a heavy-crude upgrader, which it says saved $10 to $20 a barrel. It is also buying Russian Urals crude for its Isla refinery and a storage terminal on […]

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Aussie companies early victors in Mexican oil auction

Success of auction for permits for offshore Mexico may test oil sector reforms announced last year by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. File Photo by Dennis Brack/Pool/UPI MEXICO CITY, July 14 (UPI) — Australian media reports Tuesday energy companies there are among the early victors in the first round of auctions for exploration permits offshore Mexico. Australia’s BHP Billiton and Woodside Petroleum each prequalified as bidders for the first round of auctions for permits to explore the shallow Mexican territorial waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the first in more than 70 years. Neither company offered a statement on the approval. Deutsche Bank energy analyst Paul Young told The Sydney Morning Herald deepwater permits, expected on the auction block next year, were among the "most promising and anticipated acreage" offers in the region. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto last year set a goal of producing 3.5 million barrels of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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New Oil Players Line Up to Bid on a Piece of Mexico

MEXICO CITY—Former Mexican finance minister Pedro Aspe has an unusual collection on the walls of his offices here: stock and bond certificates from some of the Mexican oil companies that existed before the industry was nationalized in 1938, creating the monopoly Petróleos Mexicanos. The more than 170 such companies that existed at the time had names, such as Co. Lluvia de Oro, or Rain of Gold Co. “Many of these companies were subsidiaries of foreign capital, but there was a Mexican oil industry too. And that’s what we want to recreate,” said Mr. Aspe, a senior managing director of Evercore Partners Inc. and head of the U.S. investment-banking advisory firm’s Mexican unit. Now, as Mexico opens its oil industry to competition for the first time in nearly 80 years, Mr. Aspe is one of several Mexican businessmen who have financed or helped create homegrown oil companies . Mexico plans […]

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Oil-Thirsty China a Winner in Iran Deal

BEIJING—The Iran nuclear deal is likely to provide big benefits to one of its brokers—China—giving Beijing greater room to ramp up Iranian oil imports as part of a global buying binge. For years, the U.S. threatened to punish countries that didn’t reduce crude imports from Iran, forcing China’s government and oil companies to walk a tightrope between rising Chinese energy demand and displeasing Washington. While Beijing publicly opposed the U.S. moves, China also cut its Iranian oil imports in 2012 and 2013, boosting U.S. efforts to isolate Iran’s economy. China and Iran had already begun ramping up their oil trade ahead of Tuesday’s deal between Tehran, Washington and five other governments, including Beijing. China on average bought more barrels a day from Iran in the first five months this year than before U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran intensified. Over time new Chinese investment in energy and infrastructure there could […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple