Industry

Following the recent news that Saudi Arabia’s national oil company Saudi Aramco will issue its prospectus to potential investors in its initial public offering (IPO); Colin Foreman, Deputy Editor at data and analytics company, GlobalData, provided his view:

“The public sale of shares in the world’s biggest oil exporter will be the first time since the 1970s that private and foreign investors will have been able to own a stake in the Gulf’s upstream oil and gas assets.

“The IPO is a cornerstone play in Riyadh’s Vision 2030 economic reform programme, launched in April 2016, which seeks to diversify Saudi Arabia’s oil-dominated economy and increase the role of the private sector by driving growth and job creation.

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The discovery of a massive oil field in Iran will deliver little in the way of tangible spin-offs for the second largest country in the Middle East, according to international analysis of the discovery.

The discovery made world headlines recently, but according to data and analytics company, GlobalData, the country is facing challenges reaping the full-benefits of the yield.

Will Scargill, Managing Analyst, Oil and Gas at GlobalData, commented: “Limits on investment and exports due to sanctions mean that the exploration successes at the Namavaran field can’t translate into material benefit.

“Iran already has a large number of projects holding billions of barrels of resources that it cannot fully-realize, and this just adds to that list.

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The natural gas industry contributed around $55 billion to Queensland’s economy over a seven-year period, according to a new report released recently by Lawrence Consulting.

In reaction to the findings, APPEA said the report underlines the importance of the sector for jobs and economic wealth creation for the state, particularly in regional areas such as Gladstone, Toowoomba, Roma, Chinchilla and Dalby and highlights that Brisbane is the state’s biggest gas town and relies on the industry for jobs and spending.

Almost $5 billion was spent on wages state-wide during the period with the industry employing around 4600 full-time employees, according to the Economic Impact of Queensland’s Petroleum and Gas sector 2011-18 report.

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Blue Energy has signed a non-binding MOU with North Queensland Gas Pipeline No.1 Pty Ltd and North Queensland Gas Pipeline No. 2 Pty Ltd (together referred to as NQGP) to facilitate bringing new domestic gas supplies into the strong Townsville market.

NQGP is North Queensland’s only source of natural gas. The 391km onshore natural gas pipeline system transports gas from the existing Moranbah Gas Project in the Bowen Basin to power and industrial users in Townsville, Queensland.

Blue Energy said that as part of the MOU, NQGP will facilitate introductions to potential customers in Townsville for Blue Energy’s Northern Bowen Basin gas reserves in the Sapphire Block of ATP814P, which is located in close proximity to the NQGP.

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Senex Energy Ltd has celebrated notification from Jemena that it has completed the Project Atlas natural gas pipeline. In June 2018 Senex partnered with energy infrastructure provider Jemena to build, own and operate a 15 petajoule per annum (40 TJ/day) gas processing facility and 60km buried pipeline to the Wallumbilla Hub. Senex said Jemena has now reached mechanical completion of the pipeline, less than three months since construction began in July. Construction of the Project Atlas gas processing facility is ongoing, with commissioning of the facility and pipeline to begin soon.

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Allowing enterprise agreements to run the full length of major project construction is a sensible and long overdue reform, critical to securing the next wave of resources and energy project investment, says the Australian Resources and Energy Group. Life-of-project agreements are the subject of a policy discussion paper released last week by Attorney General and Minister for Industrial Relations, Christian Porter. CEO of Australian Resources and Energy Group AMMA Steve Knott said this would be a critical reform providing certainty around cost and timing of world-class resources and energy projects which take up to seven years to complete.

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Drone attacks on Saudi Aramco will severely disrupt NGL and petrochemicals supply - much more than oil. The impact on global economic and geopolitical dynamics will be huge, writes Joseph Chang, Global Editor, ICIS Chemical Business. The drone attacks on Saudi Aramco’s oil and gas facilities and key infrastructure will have significant ripple effects in the global energy and petrochemical markets, as well as the global economy, as oil prices rise and natural gas production is disrupted. The drone strikes on 14 September hit the Khurais oilfield and Abqaiq, the world’s largest crude oil and natural gas processing site.

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On every score the second Australasian Exploration Geoscience Conference (AEGC2019) lived up to its rock star billing by exceeding even the wildest expectations. Record breaking numbers tallied after the gathering at Crown in Perth revealed that 1182 delegates, including 459 full conference subscribers, attended the four-day event in the first week of September. This represented growth in excess of 30% from last year’s inaugural event in Sydney comprising identified members that included: two AIG-ASEG-PESA, three AIG-PESA, 53 ASEG-PESA, 43 AIG-ASEG, 93 AIG, 245 ASEG and169 PESA memberships.

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Employment opportunities for Australia’s geoscientists continued to show a very slow-improving trend, despite disappointing results for the second quarter (April to June), an Australian Geoscientist Employment survey has established. The second quarter setback saw unemployment rise from 7.5% at the end of March, to 9.3% at the end of June. On the other hand, underemployment amongst self-employed geoscientists fell from 20.5% to 14.9% for the same period. The underemployment figure represents the proportion of self-employed geoscientists unable to secure more than one quarter of their desired workload. The survey was completed by 734 respondents nationally.

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