DMEA: Asset sales and petchem plans

This week’s DMEA includes coverage of Bahrain’s steps towards monetising its oil and gas infrastructure and efforts by Iran to increase feedstock for petrochemical production.

Bahrain’s Oil & Gas Holding Co. (nogaholding) is hiring a team of advisors to work on plans to monetise oil and gas assets, according to the company’s CEO.

Speaking to Bloomberg this week, Mark Thomas, CEO of nogaholding, which controls the state’s shareholding in Bahrain’s oil and gas assets, said: “Everything is on the table for us,” noting that it would consider public offerings or share sales to private investors.

nogaholding was previously the investment arm of the National Oil & Gas Authority (NOGA), which was abolished by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa in September with the firm’s functions assumed by the Ministry of Oil.

“We’ll take the next six months to develop the national energy strategy and the operational strategy for nogaholding, so by the third quarter we’ll have a very clear picture of where we want to go,” Thomas said. “Within that, we’ll have done a deep root financial analysis from which we’ll decide where we might want to monetise,” he added.

The company’s assets include the upstream focused Tatweer Petroleum Co., the 267,000 barrels per day Bahrain Petroleum Co. (BAPCO) refinery – which is currently being expanded to 380,000 bpd, a share in the 350,000 bpd Saudi-Bahrain A/B Pipeline and the Bahrain LNG import terminal.

Meanwhile, Iran’s state petrochemical firm said this week that it intends to more than double the country’s supply of feedstock for petrochemical projects by the end of the decade.

Speaking to the official Shana energy sector media outlet, Morteza Shahmirzaei, CEO of the National Petrochemical Co. (NPC), said that the feedstock level would increase from the current 1.1mn bpd to 2.6mn bpd by 2030, alongside a major expansion of petrochemical production capacity.

At present, the Islamic Republic’s petchem industry has a production capacity of around 90mn tonnes per year (tpy), he said, which NPC, ambitiously, anticipates rising to 200mn tpy by 2030.

Shahmirzaei said: “By doubling the amount of feedstock supplied to petrochemical complexes by the end of the eighth development plan, high value-added products will be produced that are not comparable to the current output.”