Recently in Gas Reserves Category

Turkey is all set to invest in Iran's Pars offshore gas fields. Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler recently declared that Turkey will invest $12 billion to develop Iran's offshore gas fields.
Iran's Oil Minister, Gholam Hussein Nozari and Guler signed an agreement in Tehran recently.
Iran and Turkey signed a memorandum of understanding which states that Turkey will invest in the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th phase of development of the offshore gas fields and will buy 50 percent of its produced gas. According to the MoU, Turkmenistan gas will be transferred from Iran to Turkey and Iran will transport its gas to Europe through Turkey.

The Europan Union is desperately seeking to cut its dependence on Russian gas and is planning on harnessing more energy from the wind, the sun, the sea as well as identifying new sources in Africa and the Caspian, to do so.
Since energy prices have risen by around 15 percent in the EU last year, leaders are urgently searching for a permanent solution to this problem.
Pricing disputes with Russia, interruption of supplies by transit states and Russian invasion of Georgia have all contributed towards pushing the 27- nation organisation towards reducing its dependence on Russian gas.
The European Commission's Strategic Energy Review has stated that they will seek to finalize gas supply commitments from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan and will look at creating a consortium to buy Caspian gas. However, since the EU has set a target to cut their reliance on fossil fuels to reduce EU emissions by 2020, they are hoping that their imports will considerably reduce by then.       
Information: Article by Pete Harrison for Reuters on the Gardian website. To read the complete article click here.

Indian Petroleum Minister Murli Deora is meeting with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to discuss closer energy cooperation ahead of next month’s bilateral summit during President Dmitry Medvedev’s New Delhi visit. Both countries hope to create closer energy ties.
The Russian Natural Resources Ministry has even allowed Indian oil corporation ONGC Videsh Ltd to acquire London listed Imperial Energy stating that its Western Siberian assets were non strategic which is OVL's biggest acquisition overseas. In return Russia is planning on carrying out exploration and extraction of hydrocarbons in the Bay of Bengal jointly with Indian petroleum gas giant GAIL.
To read the complete article click here.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in an effort to alleviate Western concerns over Russian energy deals said that talk of revising PSA's or seeking to exclude foreigners from the sector were unfounded.

Lavrov said, "Assertions about 'revisions' of PSAs and especially about squeezing foreigners out of the Russian energy sector have absolutely no basis whatsoever".

He also added that "Carrying out checks in no way means that licenses for developing deposits within the Sakhalin-2 project will be withdrawn".

Recent threats from Russian officials to withdraw an ecological permit for the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project led by Shell have led to fears that Russia wants to renegotiate the production sharing agreement.

Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev said on Tuesday that work on the Sakhalin-2 project could continue while a full-scale ecological probe, due to start on October 25 is held.

Shell has doubled the estimated cost of the Sakhalin-2 project to $20 billion which has infuriated Russia, complicating talks on the strategic swap of assets with state controlled Gazprom.

Concerns about the suspension of oil pipeline loading for technical checks on the ExxonMobil run Sakhalin-1 PSA project abounded while ExxonMobil's arm in Russia said it was unaware of any order to suspend work and business was continuing as usual.

The head of Russia's technical standards agency said that he hoped Sakhalin-1 would be able to deal with any breaches of the rules at its De Kastri terminal before its planned launch on October 1.

ExxonMobil said that while the issue needed to be sorted out, the scheduled launch of the terminal was possible.

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