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Saudi player enters Moroccan oil shale play, Gas production, Board restructuring

Iran exports gas to Armenia; Oman faces up to energy shortages; Saudi Arabia becomes US’ second largest oil supplier

Cosmo buys into Block 11, Taqa acquires North Sea acreage, green plans

Sharjah deal ‘not in Iran’s interest’; Oman deal could be reached by year-end; Iran ‘plans $4bn gas pipeline to Europe’

Abu Dhabi’s oil and gas investment arm is talking tough as it seeks to exponentially increase its already substantial portfolio with acquisitions at home and abroad. International Petroleum Investment Company is showing itself to be a tough negotiator in its talks with Spain’s Banco Santander

Falcon Petroleum Ltd, a company with Middle Eastern backing registered in Cyprus, has been awarded three blocks in Ethiopia’s Amhara Regional State. Ethiopian Minister of Mines and Energy Alemayehu Tegenu said the contract envisaged an exploration period of four years and a 25-year production period, and

In a deal said to be worth around $4bn, the government has agreed to award Royal Dutch Group a contract to capture and use flared gas in the southern region of Basra. This represents the first deal signed between the government’s South Oil Company, responsible for developing southern oil fields, and a western oil company since the US-led

Rawabi Holding Company has signed memorandum of understanding with Swiber Holdings, a ‘niche’ services provider to the offshore oil and gas industry with offices in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Swiber says it is an “integrated offshore engineering, procurement, construction, installation

Gulf Finance House’s latest initiative to establish a bank that caters specifically to the energy sector could create some attractive investment opportunities, adding another powerful instrument to Bahraini mover and shaker Esam Janahi’s ever growing portfolio.

Kuwait Energy Company has purchased Oil Search’s assets in Egypt and Yemen, and announced an agreement with the Somali government, underlining chief executive Sara Akbar’s determination to make the Kuwait-based indie a significant player in emerging hydrocarbons frontiers. A London listing is expected in 2009

The 615,000 b/d Al-Zour oil refinery, expected to be one of the world’s largest, is facing further delays after the cabinet agreed to refer the project to the State Audit Bureau of Kuwait (SABK) for investigation in response to protests against signing the final contracts by opposition members in the Popular Action Bloc. In May, state-owned Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) awarded four construction contracts worth $8.3bn to one Japanese and four South Korean companies. An estimated $2bn fifth contract was awarded to US project manager Fluor. Oil, Electricity and Water Minister Mohammed Al-Olaim had already gained support from a parliamentary committee to award the contracts after investigating claims that some contracts were not awarded to the lowest bidder.

For the UAE’s troubled energy consumers access to gas from Iran is a tiresome and not very successful process – as the experience of Sharjah’s Dana Gas deal seems to show. Imports from Iran to Sharjah have been delayed for over a year and a half, as both sides are yet to agree on a gas price, and Iran has yet to complete building the facilities to pump gas to the UAE. Internal Iranian politics provide a further obstacle as various factions in the Islamic Republic argue about the need to channel gas into the domestic market, rather than meeting export needs.