OPEC can make up for the loss of any crude production from Libya, Qatari Oil Minister Mohammed Saleh al-Sada said, after prices last week surged to a two-year high.
Al-Sada told reporters in Doha Sunday there is no shortage in oil supply. Concern that political upheaval in North Africa and the Middle East would disrupt supplies drove the price of crude to US$103.41 a barrel last week, the highest level since September 2008. Libya holds the largest proven oil reserves in Africa.
Al-Sada’s comments echoed those of a Saudi Arabian oil official, who said on Thursday there was no reason for oil prices to rise because Saudi Arabia and OPEC wouldn’t allow shortages to exist. Qatar and Libya are among the 12 members of OPEC, which pumps about 40 percent of the world’s oil. Saudi Arabia is the group’s largest and most influential member.
Photo: EPA
Their remarks came after more than a week of turmoil in Libya, with production scaled back by almost 90 percent and many employees fleeing and ships not coming to collect its products.
The seaside Brega complex, about 200km west of the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, collects crude oil and gas from Libya’s fields in the southeast and prepares it for export. It also produces some petrochemicals and refined products for local consumption.
Since the crisis began on Feb. 15, however, General Manager Fathi Eissa said the facility has had to scale back production dramatically from 90,000 barrels of crude a day to just 11,000.
There are no reliable figures about the impact of the uprising against Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi on Libya’s oil exports, but facilities across the country have been forced to make sharp cuts. Most Libyan ports — the main method of export — also were closed due to bad weather, staff shortages or production outages, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The IEA, citing reports from Western producers, said overall crude production has dropped from 1.6 million barrels per day to 850,000.
“Almost all international oil companies operating in Libya have reported partial or full shut-in of output,” the IEA said a statement on Friday. These companies account for about 72 percent of the North African country’s output. The status of oil fields operated by the National Oil Corp, which accounts for the remaining 28 percent of production, was “still unclear,” the Paris-based agency said.
At Brega, the huge spherical storage containers and reservoirs used to hold natural gas and crude oil are filling up rapidly with no ships to cart away their valuable contents.
Production in the southern fields has been throttled back until Brega can clear some of its capacity.
“At this time, we are operating with the minimum required number of operators, technicians mainly,” Eissa said. “The -production from the fields right now is at minimum, it is not completely stopped, but it is minimum.”
On Saturday, a ship arrived to collect some ammonia and methanol, but it was one of only a few since the troubles began.
The neighboring petrochemical complex of Ras Lanouf, about 100km to the west has experienced similar drops in manpower and has also had to cut production.
Ras Lanouf is also perilously close to the town of Sirte, one of the last holdouts for Qaddafi loyalists in central Libya, raising concern about clashes in the area.
The Gulf of Sidra is critical to Libya’s energy exports. The ports of As Sidra, Marsa el Brega, Ras Lanuf, Tobruk and Zuetina handle about 77 percent of Libya’s oil exports. Allegiances in the Gulf of Sidra and the economic value they represent, therefore, are key to the survival of Qaddafi’s regime.
Many of Brega’s 600 foreign workers — mostly from Britain and other European countries — were preparing to evacuate.
The British frigate HMS Cumberland, which took evacuees from Benghazi to Malta, is set to return to pick up many of Brega’s workers. They missed an earlier evacuation at Benghazi because of the poor state of communications in the country.
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
OPTIMISTIC: Inflation still has a chance of remaining below the central bank’s 2 percent alert level, as Taiwan’s economy is resilient with healthy exports, the NDC minister said Taiwan’s inflation could exceed 2 percent this year if oil prices continue to surge amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, prompting the government to reassess its economic outlook, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. DGBAS Minister Chen Shu-tzu (陳淑姿) told lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee that the agency’s earlier growth forecast of 1.68 percent in the consumer price index (CPI) and 7.71 percent for GDP this year did not account for the ongoing Middle East conflict and would need revision, if tensions persist. The previous forecast assumed an average international crude price of
RSS