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Saudi Arabian state-run oil group Saudi Aramco has reached an agreement to acquire a 17% stake in the South Korean refiner Hyundai Oilbank for a total consideration of US$1.25bn. Hyundai Oilbank is an affiliate of the publicly traded Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings and operates a 650,000 bbl/d refining complex in the western coastal city of Daesan (South Korea). More specifically, the business portfolio of Hyundai Oilbank and its 5 affiliates entails oil refining, base oil, petrochemicals, and a network of gas stations. 

This acquisition will support Saudi Aramco’s strategy to place its crude oil worldwide and will provide a dedicated outlet for its production to South Korea. Saudi Aramco is expanding its position in the Asian refining sector and plans to boost the processing capacity of its global refining network to 10 mb/d by 2030. By then, about half of the company’s refining capacity could be located outside of Saudi Arabia. In China, Saudi Aramco signed an agreement to acquire a 9% stake in the Zhejiang Zhoushan greenfield refinery and petrochemical complex project in the city of Zhoushan, in Zhejiang; the refinery is currently being built and will have a processing capacity of 800,000 bbl/d. Saudi Aramco also agreed to form a joint venture (JV) with the Chinese company Norinco (China North Industries Corporation) and Panjin Sincen to jointly develop another 300,000 bbl/d refining and petrochemical complex in the city of Panjin, in Liaoning (northern China) as of 2024; Saudi Aramco will own 35% of the newly formed Huajin Aramco Petrochemical company.

The Portuguese market regulator CMVM (Securities Market Commission) has set a strict time deadline for China Three Gorges (CTG) to take over the 76.7% stake it doesn’t own in Portuguese energy group EDP.

Independent oil and gas producer Energean has announced a significant gas discovery at its Karish North exploration well offshore Israel. The initial gas located in place is currently estimated to range between 1 Tcf (28 bcm) and 1.5 Tcf (42 bcm).

The European Commission has approved a €5bn Polish power scheme for high-efficiency cogeneration and surcharge reductions for large-scale energy users.

According to the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA), US exports of crude oil neardly doubled in 2018, from 1.2 mb/d in 2017 to 2 mb/d in 2018. The primary driver behind rising exports is the increase of the domestic crude oul output (+17% in 2018) to an average of 10.9 mb/d. Most of the increase in production is related to the Gulf Coast states (7.1 mb/d, i.e.

Qatar Petroleum has invited three groups to bid for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) packages for four new LNG trains its North Field Expansion (NFE) project in Qatar. The three EPC joint ventures are the following: Chiyoda Corporation – Technip; JGC Corporation – Hyundai Engineering and Construction; and Saipem – McDermott – CTCI Corporation.

US energy group Sempra Energy has started to feed gas into the first liquefaction train of Phase 1 of its Cameron LNG export project in Hackberry, Lousiana (United States). The construction activities have been completed and the commissioning process began in November 2018. The company is now reaching the final commissioning steps.  …

The European Commission has cleared the Baltic Pipe project and approved a €215m grant under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme for the Baltic Pipe gas interconnection project connecting Poland and Denmark with Norway.

Aomori Nishikita Offshore Wind Power Joint Company, a joint venture (JV) of Hitachi Zosen Corporation and Eco Power, has unveiled plans to develop a 500 MW offshore wind park off the coast of the Aomori prefecture in Japan. The project is expected to feature up to 125 turbines with individual capacity of between 4 MW and 9.5 MW and to become operational after 2025. …