EIC Middle East News
Middle East News
Discussions are now underway to see what options are available to deliver a reception around what we know will be a busy period. One event that we are endorsing is a social occasion taking place on the Thursday before, 7 November. Organised by the originators of the Oil Baron’s Ball, The Big Oilfield BBQ promises to be an excellent pre-event networking evening. More information can be found at the event website: http://thebigeventcompany.me/bbq.html With the summer months now upon us as well as Ramadan kicking off later this month, one would expect business activity plus the number of visitors to slow down but that has so far not been the case. Notwithstanding the excellent turn out for our Cheese and Wine Fondue night, other members who we have visited or otherwise have met at the office include Gordon Blackwood and Steve Pigg from SafeHouse, Nicky Mendoza-Wilson from Move One, Claire Peddle of Control Risks, Chris Bolton who is with Inspection Verification Bureau and who was accompanied by Kay Ruessel of GL Noble Denton, Audrey Sequier from AVEVA Solutions, Vikram Nanda and Alex McDonnell from NES Global, Chris Ripley from Edinburgh International, Martin Bolton from Aquaterra Energy plus Giovanni Pacheco, the CEO of Isolatek visiting us from the US HQ along with Saju Joseph, MD Middle East and Blany D’Cunha from their Dubai operation. Finally, it was a pleasure to be at the official opening ceremony of Rotork’s new Middle East operation. Their CEO Peter France cut the ribbon along with Edward Hobart, HM Consul General who was accompanied by John Pratt, Middle East Director and Ashley Watkins, Business Development Manager for the Middle East. Terry Willis, Director, Middle East Contact: terry.willis@the-eic.com
Office News The geo-political landscape in the Middle East remains unsettled. The nucleus of the uncertainty continues to be the situation in Syria. The current government’s strongest regional ally, Iran is going to the polls to elect a new government and the internal politics currently underway makes it difficult to predict a positive outcome. In the meantime, Iran’s surreptitiously funded Lebanon based militia is now openly fighting alongside Syria government forces which leaves the ‘meat in the sandwich’ country, Iraq watching its borders on both fronts, while continuing to face its own internal challenges with the recent upsurge in attacks targeting government institutions across all three regions, with the northern region of Kurdistan continuing to be the only beacon of positive light. Against this uncertainty, business continues to roll on and soon after our excellent Iraq focussed conference session at EIC Connect last month, we undertook a UK Government sponsored visit to all three areas of Iraq to assess at first-hand how EIC members can try and mitigate the various challenges that exist in order to take advantage of opportunities that continue to arise from the Iraq market. It is such a tragedy that the environment in Kurdistan cannot be replicated elsewhere but that unfortunately is the current price of local politics and we remain observant as to any progress that is made internally to overcome those obstacles. In the meantime, we are endorsing the latest Iraq Mega Projects Conference & Exhibition taking place on 30 September to 2 October and will continue to make preparations to host a UK Pavilion at Basra Oil & Gas in December, the details of which will be posted on the events section of our website: http://www.the-eic.com/Events/FullEventsDiary.aspx A not dissimilar situation appears to be coming to light in Libya. At the time of our overseas delegation at the end of January, we were confident that things were moving in the right direction and the market would become a fertile source of business within the next 18 months once the new Government was formed and stable. However, since then there has been a number of de-stabilising incidents that makes one question that observation. Nevertheless, we remain cautiously optimistic and continue to plan for another overseas delegation there early next year. Other markets being considered for future delegations include Qatar, Azerbaijan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia but in the meantime, please do not hesitate to let our Overseas Events team know of any other markets that you believe you could benefit from if we were to put together an overseas delegation. Finally on events, it is particularly pleasing to note that our space for this year’s ADIPEC exhibition has sold out. Given that the organisers changed the show from a bi-annual to an annual show, we were left considerably reticent as to whether or not this would be a good move but its nice to be proved wrong occasionally.
Regional Comment Larsen and Toubro wins contract in Saudi Arabia Larsen and Toubro (L&T) has won a contract from Saudi Aramco to build facilities, including a gas processing plant to develop the Midyan gas field in Saudi Arabia. Gas produced from the Midyan field is expected to be used by power plants in the country and generate electricity. L&T will construct the gas processing plant with a capacity of 75 million cubic feet per day of non-associated gas and 4,500 barrels of condensate per day. The project will include building two pipelines of 98km that will supply gas and hydrocarbon liquids to a power plant near Duba. New discovery offshore Israel Noble Energy has made a natural gas discovery at the Karish prospect offshore Israel. The Karish-1 well was drilled some 75km north west of Haifa to a final depth of 4,790 metres below sea level. The well encountered a natural gas bearing strata of around 60 metres. Noble stated that discovered gross resources, combined with the de-risked resources in an adjacent fault block on the license, are estimated to range between 1.6 and 2 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) with a gross mean of 1.8 Tcf.
EIC Newsbriefs – Keeping you up to date on energy news from around the world. Email membership@the-eic.com www.the-eic.com
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July 2013