State owned oil company of Saudi Arabia and the largest oil corporation in the world. Saudi Arabian Oil Company produces, manufactures, markets and ships crude oil, natural gas and petroleum products to meet the global demand. Saudi Arabia has stewardship over the world’s largest oil reserves–one quarter of the global total– at 264 billion barrels
Saudi Arabia sits atop the world’s biggest known energy reserves — 264 billion barrels of oil and nearly 258 trillion cubic feet of gas and produces some 9,600,000 barrels of oil a day
The Samsung Ceyhan (SCP) oil pipeline is due to be completed during 2009-2010. The pipeline is due to transmit CPC blend oil, as it passes via north Turkey southwards (ENI is the operator)
A type of geological structure where a rock layer has pushed up into the rock layer above in a typically spherical shape. Domes are often good oil or gas traps
A domical arch (anticline) of sedimentary rock beneath the earth’s surface in which the layers bend downward in opposite directions from the crest and that has a mass of rock salt as its core. Salt is a peculiar substance. If you put enough heat and pressure on it, the salt will slowly flow, much like a glacier that slowly but continually moves downhill. Unlike glaciers, salt which is buried kilometers below the surface of the Earth can move upward until it breaks through to the Earth’s surface, where it is then dissolved by ground- and rain-water. To get all the way to the Earth’s surface, salt has to push aside and break through many layers of rock in its path. This is what ultimately will create the oil trap. Hydrocarbons are commonly found around salt domes because of the abundance and variety of traps created by salt movement and the association with evaporite minerals that can provide excellent sealing capabilities
Underground salt formations offer an option for natural gas storage. These formations are well suited to natural gas storage in that salt caverns, once formed, allow little injected natural gas to escape from the formation unless specifically extracted. The walls of a salt cavern also have the structural strength of steel, which makes it very resilient against reservoir degradation over the life of the storage facility. Salt caverns are formed out of existing salt deposits. These underground salt deposits may exist in two possible forms: salt domes, and salt beds. Salt domes are thick formations created from natural salt deposits that, over time, leach up through overlying sedimentary layers to form large dome-type structures. Typically, salt domes used for natural gas storage are between 6,000 and 1,500 feet beneath the surface. Salt beds are shallower, thinner formations. Because salt beds are wide, thin formations, once a salt cavern is introduced, they are more prone to deterioration, and may also be more expensive to develop than salt domes. Once a suitable salt dome or salt bed deposit is discovered, and deemed suitable for natural gas storage, it is necessary to develop a ‘salt cavern’ within the formation. Essentially, this consists of using water to dissolve and extract a certain amount of salt from the deposit, leaving a large empty space in the formation. This is done by drilling a well down into the formation, and cycling large amounts of water through the completed well. This water will dissolve some of the salt in the deposit, and be cycled back up the well, leaving a large empty space that the salt used to occupy. This process is known as ‘salt cavern leaching’. Cushion gas requirements are the lowest of all three storage types, with salt caverns only requiring about 33 percent of total gas capacity to be used as cushion gas. Salt caverns are best suited for peak load storage. Salt caverns are typically much smaller than depleted gas reservoirs and aquifers and usually take up only one one-hundredth of the acreage taken up by a depleted gas reservoir. As such, salt caverns cannot hold the volume of gas necessary to meet base load storage requirements. However, deliverability from salt caverns is typically much higher than for either aquifers or depleted reservoirs. Therefore natural gas stored in a salt cavern may be more readily (and quickly) withdrawn, and caverns may be replenished with natural gas more quickly than in either of the other types of storage facilities. Moreover, salt caverns can readily begin flowing gas on as little as one hour’s notice, which is useful in emergency situations or during unexpected short term demand surges. Salt caverns may also be replenished more quickly than other types of underground storage facilities
Subsidiary of the Italian energy corporation ENI. Saipem is one of the world’s largest turnkey contractors in the oil and gas industry dealing in onshore, offshore and drilling activities, whilst attempting to provide EPC/EPIC solutions for the most technically challenging projects, such as activities in remote areas, deepwater, gas, difficult oil
This index represents the oil and gas exploration and production sub-industry portion of the S&P Total Market Index providing data on the 37 largest global O&G companies, with an average market share of $31 billion
Generally when royalty interests are being bought, sold and held by the funds sponsors. In a royalty fund the objective of the fund is to generate it’s revenue from royalties that are held from different producing fields throughout the country. The main feature to owning a percentage of a royalty fund is that with an oil royalty the royalty owner (or interest owner) pays no percentage of operating or developmental costs associated with the production of the oil or gas. Royalty programs generally offer a low risk factor along with a relatively low return. However, their main feature is that these types of programs last for many years.
A percentage of interest in the value of production from a field that is paid to the mineral rights owner (such as to the host government, landowner, mineral owner). The payment of royalties is in most cases entirely dependent upon the sale or use of the gas by the lessee.
In Israel the royalties are set at 12.5% to be paid to the state. Royalties as a matter of fact for natural gas such as for the Mari-B field totalled only 11.21% because the price is taken at the well-head and so one deducts the cost of the infrastructure to shore and the terminal
Royalties differ from taxes which are paid from the revenue, in that royalties are paid from the total value of production. A few agreements provide for the royalty to be taken only in kind by the royalty owner
