there is a lot of works in downstream. not necessary upstream. it is a matter one willing to take it with pay-cut or can take the work loads or restart learning from zero.

Yup you are right. My subsequent post mentioned that once retrench the interest rate goes back to the normal market rate

McDermott shift from Singapore to Malaysia done by June

SINGAPORE: The relocation of Houston-based McDermott International from Singapore to Malaysia is expected to be completed by June.

Its vice-president and general manager for Asia-Pacific, Hugh Cuthbertson said the transition was underway and new personnel were being recruited in Kuala Lumpur since two months ago.

"We will continue this and hope to have the office fully manned by June.

"Our new head office has been fully prepared and out-fitted, it is already functioning and new personnel are already working from it," Cuthbertson said in an email interview with Bernama.

Besides McDermott, other multinational oil services companies, including Technip and Subsea 7, are also relocating to Malaysia from the republic.

McDermott, which provides engineering solutions and designs oil production facilities, was reportedly bucked the trend of most offshore and marine players and done relatively well in the past year.

It grew its order book of oil production facilities last year to US$4.2 billion (US$1=RM3.89) from US$3.6 billion in 2014, the largest increase in orders since 2012, a report said.

"Our move to Malaysia was influenced by several factors, we have a client base in Kuala Lumpur and we want to work closely with clients as we move forward.

"Kuala Lumpur is also increasingly recognised as a regional hub for the oil and gas industry. Many of our key suppliers and specialist vendors are based there and there is a strong oil and gas industry engineering base as well," Cuthbertson said.

On April 13, McDermott named its US$453 million new flagship vessel DLV2000, proving that it is positioning itself for the global energy recovery amidst a lower global oil price and reduced deep water exploration.

The first project DLV2000 will be deployed for is the INPEX Ichthys Liquefied Natural Gas project in offshore Western Australia next month.

The DLV2000 will add high-end capabilities and versatility to McDermott's global fleet by utilising a single vessel on projects requiring a combination of pipelay, heavy lift and deck space for structures and offshore workforce accommodation that would normally be executed by multiple vessels.

McDermott is a leading provider of integrated engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPIC) services for offshore and subsea field developments worldwide, offering financial strength through diversity.

It delivers fixed and floating production facilities, pipelines and subsea systems from concept to commissioning to help all companies safely produce and transport hydrocarbons.

McDermott has served the energy industry since 1923 and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. - Bernama

Another layoff or first time?

Shell cutting back manpower sharply at Iraq’s Majnoon oilfield

BAGHDAD: Royal Dutch Shell is cutting its workforce sharply at the Majnoon oilfield near Basra in southern Iraq as the government’s financial woes deepen.

Majnoon is one of the five “supergiant” (containing more than 5 billion barrels) oilfields located in southern Iraq, with estimated recoverable reserves of nearly 13 billion barrels, and it has been a major provider of additional funds for the Iraqi government since it started exporting two years ago.

The field employed more than 3,000 at peak construction – three-quarters of whom were Iraqis. But the expatriate workforce had dwindled to 400 amid cutbacks as the government has struggled with both the collapse in oil prices over the past 18 months and the costs of the war with militants in the west of the country.

Now the expatriate workforce is being trimmed to 200, according to a Shell executive who helps manage the project.

A Shell spokesman in Dubai said: “In light of the economic challenges, Shell is supporting the country by implementing cost efficiencies while reducing our expatriate workforce across our businesses,” but he declined to specify the number of job cuts at Majnoon. He added that “the Majnoon oilfield continues to reliably and safely produce more than 200,000 barrels per day, which is of significant value to Iraq”. He declined to comment on whether the cutbacks might affect future production.

It is the latest blow to the Iraqi prime minister Haider Al Abadi and his government, which has been warned for months by international oil firms that investment in maintaining and adding to production could be stalled because of cutbacks.

The country has been one of the world’s largest sources of additional oil over the past year, despite the oil price collapse. Production in the first quarter averaged about 4.3 million barrels per day, up nearly 500,000 bpd from a year earlier, according to the consuming countries’ energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency.

Most of the oil is produced in the southern oilfields, where international oil companies including Shell, BP and Exxon are revamping long-neglected fields that rank among the largest in the world. Despite the war, which has caused periodic disruptions to exports from the north of the country, Iraq’s southern fields have grown consistently. March marked the fifth successive month of exports above 3.2 million bpd, earning the government an estimated US$2.9 billion that month alone.

Still, the Iraqi government has struggled to meet its obligations to the oil companies. The IEA estimates that the government’s arrears to the companies are about $6bn. The oil price slump has led the government to seek oilfield budget cutbacks, which have fallen to $9bn this year from $13bn last year.

The Majnoon deal in 2010 was seen as a forerunner of things to come, with Shell winning a contract to essentially act as a service contractor rather than an equity partner, getting a 45 per cent stake in a deal that netted $1.39 per barrel for Shell, Malaysia’s Petronas (30 per cent) and Iraq’s Missan Oil Company (25 per cent).

Under the terms of the deal, Shell and its partners are compensated in oil they can sell on international markets, but while the deal worked well for the Iraqi government when oil prices averaged $100 a barrel, it must hand over considerably more oil to compensate the partners while oil prices hover near $40 a barrel.

Besides Majnoon, Shell holds a 20 per cent stake in the southern oilfield of West Qurna 1, which is operated by ExxonMobil. It is also in a 25-year joint venture with Iraq’s state-run South Gas Company to gather, treat and process associated gas from West Qurna 1, Zubair and Rumaila in the south, and it has a 44 per cent stake in the Basrah Gas Company joint venture.

The Shell spokesman said: “A lower oil price has resulted in a challenging business environment impacting our partners in Iraq and the Shell Group. We are managing a range of issues across our portfolio of projects and implementing measures to ensure continuous business improvement and cost competitiveness.”

Shell said in January that it would be cutting 10,000 jobs worldwide. Industry-wide, hundreds of thousands of jobs have been cut over the past year from both private and government oil and gas companies. Iraq and the IMF last week agreed on $5.4bn in three-year emergency financing.

But even with the IMF loan, Fitch Ratings forecasts that Iraq’s government budget deficit will widen to 15 per cent of GDP this year, to $22bn, assuming that crude exports remain steady at 3.3 million bpd and the government makes modest spending cuts. “Lower oil revenue is also causing a balance-of-payments shock,” Fitch said. “The central bank’s stock of foreign reserves (including gold) has fallen from $78bn at the end of 2013 to about $50bn currently. This is still a robust level, at about nine months of current external payments, but is set to fall further this year and next.”

SapuraKencana Energy Make Gas Discovery in SK408 PSC Offshore Sarawak

SapuraKencana Energy (SKE), the upstream arm of integrated oil and gas services firm SapuraKencana Petroleum Berhad, reported Tuesday that it has made a gas discovery in its 2015 three-well drilling campaign in SK408 Production Sharing Contract (PSC), offshore Sarawak, Malaysia.

The drilling campaign targeted non-associated gas within the primary target Late Miocene Carbonate reservoirs and the first well, Jerun-1, is a significant gas find located 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) north of the 2014 Bakong gas discovery.

The well has an interpreted gross gas column of approximately 2,625 feet (800 meters) in the primary target reservoir and is a multi-trillion cubic feet (Tcf) gas discovery.

SapuraKencana Petroleum added that Jeremin-1, located about 9.3 miles (15 kilometers) west of the F9 gas field, encountered a 341 feet (104 meters) gross gas column but the Putat-1 prospect, which is located 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) north of the Cili Padi gas field, has been confirmed as a dry hole.

All wells have been safely plugged and abandoned. The Jerun-1 and Jeremin-1 wells together with the five discoveries made earlier within Block SK408 are close to existing infrastructure supplying gas to one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities at Bintulu, Sarawak.

“The 2015 drilling campaign for SK408 has been executed within budget and completed safely by the SKE team with exceptional results,” SapuraKencana Petroleum President & Group CEO Shahril Shamsuddin said in a press release.

SKE is the exploration operator, holding a 40 percent working interest, while partners PETRONAS Carigali Sdn Bhd and Sarawak Shell Bhd each hold 30 percent of the remaining stake.

Plus, last year TA, I heard Shell only do partial for 1 year DOSH-SSI requirement instead of 3 years like Petronas & Petron, mau jual, don't spend too much money, let new owner think of it, haha, but Shell smart, they did not sell lube plant and jetty

(^__^)

Brunei ke arah kuasa downstream O&G besar Asia...

Petronas to partner Saudi Aramco on RAPID

This article first appeared in Corporate, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on June 6 - 12, 2016.

PETROLIAM Nasional Bhd (Petronas) has taken another important step forward in the RM60 billion Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (RAPID) project in Pengerang, south Johor.

According to an industry source, Petronas intends to partner Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) on building the refinery and a steam cracker complex that will form the backbone of RAPID.

The source says the preliminary plan shows that the cost of the refinery and steam cracker plant is likely to be in the region of US$12 billion, or about RM50 billion.

It is understood that Petronas and Saudi Aramco had firmed up an agreement earlier this year to facilitate the massive development.

Under the partnership, Petronas Refinery and Petrochemical Corp Sdn Bhd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Petronas, is likely to join forces with a Saudi Aramco unit for the refinery job. Another Saudi Aramco unit could tie up with a Petronas unit — possibly Petronas Chemicals Group Bhd (PetChem) — for the development of the steam cracker complex.

Petronas owns 64.35% of the publicly listed PetChem.

The plan is to build a refinery with the capacity to process 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and a steam cracker plant with an annual capacity of more than three million tonnes of petrochemicals. It is understood that a significant portion of the production from the steam cracker complex will be sold as feedstock to the surrounding Pengerang plants.

Some of the plants being built include Italy-based Maire Tecnimont’s US$482 million polypropylene plant with an annual capacity of 900,000 tonnes and that of China’s Huanqiu Contracting & Engineering Corp, which is likely to be completed in 2019.

Other outfits, such as PRPC Glycols Sdn Bhd, PRPC Polymers Sdn Bhd and PRPC Elastomers Sdn Bhd, have also been set up in Pengerang. These three companies were sold by Petronas Refinery and Petrochemical Corp to PetChem last November for RM13,000 and the assumption of US$110 million in debt.

It is understood that PRPC Refinery and Cracker Sdn Bhd and its related units could play a key role in the development of the refinery and steam cracker plant.

A check on the Companies Commission of Malaysia website indicates that PRPC Refinery and Cracker is almost 100% owned by Petronas Refinery and Petrochemical Corp with individuals Mohd Farid Mohd Adnan and Juniwati Rahmat Hussin having minute shareholdings.

“The viability of the proposal is more or less firmed up and the funding requirements are being ironed out. It shouldn’t be a problem, considering Petronas and Saudi Aramco are government-linked companies. The project’s completion is set for 2019, if all goes well,” says the source.

The RAPID project is spearheaded by Petronas and involves 20 years of development to transform Pengerang from a sleepy seaside town into a regional petrochemical hub by 2035. The first phase, currently being undertaken, is to be completed in 2019. It will involve 38% of the 20,000 acres of available land on which the project is being built.

If it happens, it will be a coup for Petronas to get Saudi Aramco as its partner to develop RAPID. Headquartered in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, the state oil company of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest crude oil exporter, producing roughly one out of eight barrels of the world’s supply.

Saudi Aramco is conservatively valued at US$2.5 trillion, and plans for the company to sell a 5% block via an initial public offering have already generated considerable interest. It is, after all, the world’s largest energy firm.

Just listing 5% of Saudi Aramco would give the company a potential value of US$125 billion.

PetChem, the downstream arm of Petronas, has made known that it will be charting its next phase of growth in RAPID. So far, PetChem has awarded four contracts worth a combined US$1.36 billion to two consortia to build the four polyethylene and glycol processing plants in the RAPID project.

The investments in RAPID would make PetChem the region’s largest producer of polyethylene and glycol. With that, the group could capture future demand for petrochemicals. Furthermore, PetChem would be able to reduce its dependence on natural gas as feedstock.

The group intends to have facilities that consume naphtha as feedstock as a safeguard against a possible gas shortage.

In its first quarter ended March 31, 2016, PetChem posted a net profit of RM592 million on revenue of RM3.15 billion. In the previous corresponding period, it had raked in a net profit of RM605 million on revenue of RM3.14 billion.

As at March 31, PetChem had cash and cash equivalents of RM8.57 billion, long-term debt of RM346 million and short-term borrowings of RM15 million. Its reserves stood at RM23.34 billion.

USD 12 billion is A LOT berow. Hehehehe. I wonder for which specific package.

Saudi Aramco seems very active on stake acquisition around the globe lately, particularly on Cilacap oil refinery at Indonesia owned by Pertamina where currently undergo massive expansion project and the EPCM is Amec-FW, and now Malaysia for Rapid.

I hope the IPO exercise by Saudi Aramco will be materialize this year, and it will be the biggest IPO ever in this planet.

What is the different with VSS and MSS?

I thought different company, not Petronas

Google about the origin of Sinopec and you should probably know what kind of "working environment" expectation you dealing with hehehehe

Worked 5 years in ESSO refinery but applied 10 times with Petronas also never get any reply. Not even asking for engineer or manager post, just the operator post.

Talisman Sinopec Energy UK (TSEUK), an oil and gas company operating offshore oil fields in the UK North Sea, has officially been renamed to Repsol Sinopec Resources UK.

Talisman Sinopec Energy UK announced the name change on Monday and the company noted that there is no change to the legal entity of the company registry numbers or other related company data.

To remind, the name change follows the acquisition of Canada’s Talisman Energy by Spain’s Repsol in 2015 for $8.3 billion plus assumed debt of $4.7 billion.