Holmwood Consulting Limited (HCL)

Power black-outs are rife and new plans in serious doubt - South African power is in a poor state.

The EU feels that it has strengthened its hand, and substantially weakened Russia’s, following its “successful” April meetings in Central Asian regarding natural gas supplies.  Once again we are being fed a rosy glow by the Brussels diplomats but EU still doesn’t realise that tea & biscuits and friendly nods from the Turkmen president is unlikely to change anything in reality as there are...

Following Iran shutting off gas supplies to Turkey, the national gas company Botas has been forced to import LNG cargoes from Algeria, Egypt and others to fill the gap but at what price.

Finally, a LNG import terminal  is going to happen in the northeast USA.  There are however serious issues around business model, future LNG supply and timing which are looming on the horizon even after this terminal is commissioned.

NOCs now have both the money and the political power to outbid the IOCs in almost every circumstance and this is "in spades" when we look at Russia. There is no doubt that Sakhalin 1 (and the rights for Sakhalin 3) will go the same way as the Shell deal arranged for Sakhalin 2, with ExxonMobil having to settle for a minority share (or leave which is extremely unlikely) and Gazprom taking minimum 51%...