Oil & Natural Gas: News & Discussion
Posted: 29 Oct 2007 11:19
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Even as Turkish troops mass on the border of northern Iraq, India's Reliance signed a deal on Monday to explore for oil and gas in Iraq's Kurdish region, a senior company official said.
Reliance signed the production sharing contract for two exploration blocks with the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), the source said.
"To begin with we will be 100 percent stakeholders but later on Iraq can mandate a company to have a stake in the blocks after discovery in line with their new law," the company official, who declined to be named, said.
"They have been given to us on (a) negotiation basis."
A KRG government spokesman was not immediately available to respond to enquiries about the deal.
Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops along the Iraqi border in readiness for a possible large scale incursion to hunt 3,000 guerrillas who use Iraq's Kurdish region as a base.
But the KRG is moving ahead with plans to attract international energy companies to explore for oil and gas in the region. It aims to boost oil output to 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in about five years from just a few thousand now.
Told this before..........there is gas and oil anywhere you dig. I will not be surprised if we find oil in Haryana............in my farm lands .Vipul wrote:ONGC makes Gas discovery in Rajasthan.
You never know, hold on to your farm lands.rsingh wrote:Told this before..........there is gas and oil anywhere you dig. I will not be surprised if we find oil in Haryana............in my farm lands .Vipul wrote:ONGC makes Gas discovery in Rajasthan.
Indian Oil Plans $3 Billion Oil Fields AcquisitionEssar Oil Ltd., operator of India's newest refinery, plans to raise $4 billion, half of it overseas, to more than triple capacity at the facility.
Essar, whose shares have risen five-fold this year, needs money to narrow the gap with Reliance Industries Ltd., which is using record profits to build the world's biggest refinery complex. The Indian refiners are reliant on exports because state-set retail prices make it impossible to profit from selling gasoline, diesel and heating oil at home.
``It will be hugely ambitious to grow as big as that by 2010,'' said Tony Regan, energy consultant at Nexant Inc. in Singapore. ``From 2009 we'll see significant volumes coming up, mostly from Reliance. So we're expecting refining margins to come off quite sharply.''
Essar Oil's Jamnagar refinery started last year almost a decade after it was first planned, as the group's steel unit faced losses because of falling prices of the commodity. In the interim, Reliance has built a plant in the same city that's three times larger than Essar's and will next year almost double capacity again with a new facility.
Indian Oil Corp., the nation's biggest refiner, may spend as much as $3 billion to buy an overseas oil producer to meet rising demand in the world's second-fastest-growing major economy.
The target will be a company that owns fields in Africa or countries that were part of the former Soviet Union, B.M. Bansal, director for business development, said in an interview in New Delhi yesterday. The acquisition may be made jointly with Oil India Ltd., a state-run explorer, he said.
Indian Oil and Oil & Natural Gas Corp., the nation's biggest explorer, are scouting projects in Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran and Africa to meet fuel demand in a race with China, which is securing energy supplies to feed the world's fastest-growing economy. India imports three-fourths of its oil as production from aging domestic fields is slumping.
India will begin construction on strategic crude oil storages this year as insurance against disruptions during wars and other emergencies.
Of the three sites selected to hold 5 million tons a year of crude oil reserves, equivalent to country's 15 days requirement, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh would be the first site with Hindustan Construction Co emerging as the lowest bidder, official sources said.
Contract is likely to be awarded this week.
Two other sites identified for the construction of crude storage facilities are Mangalore (1.5 million tons) and Podur (2.5 million tons ), some 40-km from Mangalore.
India has said it eventually wants to double the overall strategic reserve capacity to 73.3 million barrels, twice the 15 days cover planned currently, but this is yet to be approved by the central cabinet.
Scary $hit!!upendora wrote:A quantitative assessment of future net oil exports
Katare wrote:Scary $hit!!upendora wrote:A quantitative assessment of future net oil exports
bala wrote:India to build strategic crude oil storages
India will begin construction on strategic crude oil storages this year as insurance against disruptions during wars and other emergencies.
Of the three sites selected to hold 5 million tons a year of crude oil reserves, equivalent to country's 15 days requirement, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh would be the first site with Hindustan Construction Co emerging as the lowest bidder, official sources said.
Contract is likely to be awarded this week.
Two other sites identified for the construction of crude storage facilities are Mangalore (1.5 million tons) and Podur (2.5 million tons ), some 40-km from Mangalore.
India has said it eventually wants to double the overall strategic reserve capacity to 73.3 million barrels, twice the 15 days cover planned currently, but this is yet to be approved by the central cabinet.
Friday, January 25, 2008
London, Jan 24: India is optimistic about the 2,775-km Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline and is deeply committed to the multi-billion dollars project, Union Petroleum Minister Murli Deora said on Thursday
"Iranian Ambassador to India spoke to me yesterday and they are very keen that the project takes shape as it is in the interest of all (the) three countries," Deora said.
Asked whether he would be visiting Tehran, Deora said, "I have received an invitation" and indicated that he might make a trip at an appropriate time.
While admitting that India could not participate in a couple of meetings because of local situation, Deora said, "India is deeply committed to the pipeline project. We hope it will go through. Iran is very keen we should go ahead."
Deora replied in the negative when asked whether the US was pressurising India not to go ahead with the project.
"I have not seen any pressure and we have to take care of our energy needs," he said.
Though New Delhi and Islamabad have reached an understanding on the transportation tariff payable to Pakistan for wheeling gas through the 1,035-km pipeline segment in that country, the two nations have not yet arrived at any agreement on payment of a separate transit fee to Pakistan for using its territory.
The pipeline is slated to be laid in the three nations separately. Iran would lay a 1,100-km pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Iran-Pakistan border, while Pakistan would lay 1,035 km from its border with Iran to the Indian border.
India would then pipe the gas to consumption centres.
The total cost of the project was estimated to be over seven billion dollars in 2006.
Now, anticipating some points that Calvin would make to diss the viability of such projects, here are my answers:Antara Bose | New Delhi
The next green revolution has already happened in the tiny, remote village of Ranidahra in Chhattisgarh. Pushed to the fringes of our consciousness and urban initiative, this hamlet in the Bodla block of Kabirdham district is shining bright. For it has been electrified with bio-fuel, using jatropha seeds.
This eco-project undertaken by the State Government has been sponsored by the British High Commission and an NGO, Winrock International India. "This project was assigned to us by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. We have experimented in some of the remotest villages of Chhattisgarh over three years to assess how bio-fuels can work for long-term sustainable models. The greatest challenge was convincing the people that a plant could generate electricity. They had the conventional idea of a thermal power grid system as the only model capable of supplying 24 hours of uninterrupted power. It was a challenge," says Prodyut Mukherjee, programme officer, energy and environment, Winrock International India (WII).
Ranidahra demonstrates the technical and financial viability of running conventional generators on Jatropha oil instead of diesel. While a litre of diesel costs around Rs 30, a litre of jatropha oil requires 4 kg seeds, priced at Rs 6.25 a kg. That works to Rs 25 as input cost. Imbued with a new idea that could transform their dark lives, the villagers volunteered their services under shramdaan and planted more than 25,000 Jatropha saplings.
Since project officials did not want to interfere with the food security system, the saplings were planted along roadsides and farm boundaries but not on farmlands. Even waste lands were not spared. The village comprises 110 households and has a population of 600. "We collected the seeds and put them into a standard oil expeller. Once the oil was extracted, it was directly poured into the generators. The power plant was commissioned on April 9, 2007 and it has been running successfully since. The Government has been working on many plans but this is the one that has worked out," says Mukherjee.
Concurs S K Shukla, executive director, Chhattisgarh Biofuel Development Authority. "I am glad that a breakthrough has happened in Chhattisgarh. This plant was started in 2006. We had submitted a detailed project report to the State Government which then invited the private sector to help out and accelerate the development process. We are now planning to cover 26 villages in Korba district under the National Thermal Power Corporation. This includes areas adjoining Ranidahra. Right now we ensure three-and-a-half hours of continuous power to households and five hours for streetlights. That will go up once we increase plantation sizes."
With the existing plantations at 10 hectares, the team has come up with three generators of 3.5 KVA with a back-up generation capacity of 7.5 KVA. "We have managed the distribution patterns so that they can benefit the villagers in terms of their productivity. The streetlights work from 7 pm to midnight and the households consume power from 6 pm to 9:30 pm. Once we have enough plantations, 24-hour power supply is an absolute possibility," assures Mukherjee.
Villagers are happy. Punia Bai, who was here as a test case of how bio-fuels can change lives, says, "My children can now study after sunset. You cannot imagine the boon time. It is now safe to move around in the village as there are streetlights."
The State Government has woken up to the advatages of bio-fuels and is leaving no stone unturned to extend help. Shukla says, "We have made a beginning. We welcome franchisees and private sector to operationalise similar projects."
The project has also trained villagers in basic safety rules while working around jatropha plantations. "These plants are not edible, so they should not be mixed with other vegetation," he adds.
The good part is that it works. You can also use jatropha oil in your vehicle. The project has in no small part been aided by the fact that these villages are nearer the forest, so earmarking land for jatropha plantations was easy. But the State Government is also working on jatropha oil substitues like Pongamia, another bio-diesel and sweet Sorghum, which yields ethanol.
Being a sub-tropical country, India can grow oil-bearing seeds for bio-fuels. Of 1,25,000 un-electrified villages in India, 25,000 are considered remote. The Central Government promises 100 per cent electrification of rural households by 2012
They are taking care to plant it only on wastelands, or marginal lands. Besides, at Rs. 6.50 per Kg of seeds it is not going to be more lucrative for farmers than food crops.Rishirishi wrote:The plant can be a 2 edge sword. What happnes if it becomes more econmical to produce fuel then food?