Margarita News

Norway will block Rolls-Royce from selling a Norwegian maritime engine maker to a Russian company on national security grounds, its justice minister told parliament on Tuesday.Based on Norway’s west coast, and owned by Britain’s Rolls-Royce for more than 20 years, Bergen Engines supplies NATO member Norway’s navy as well as the global shipping industry.The blocking of the sale is a blow for Rolls-Royce, which is aiming to raise 2 billion pounds ($2.76 billion) from disposals by…

In the murky story of how a cache of highly explosive ammonium nitrate ended up on the Beirut waterfront, one thing is clear—no one has ever publicly come forward to claim it.There are many unanswered questions surrounding last week's huge, deadly blast in the Lebanese capital, but ownership should be among the easiest to resolve.Clear identification of ownership, especially of a cargo as dangerous as that carried by the Moldovan-flagged Rhosus when it sailed into Beirut seven years ago, is fundamental to shipping, the key to insuring it and settling disputes that often arise.But Reuters interviews and trawls for documents across 10 countries in search of the original ownership of this 2…

The chemicals that went up in flames in Beirut's deadliest peace-time explosion arrived in the Lebanese capital seven years ago on a leaky Russian-leased cargo ship that, according to its captain, should never have stopped there."They were being greedy," said Boris Prokoshev, who was captain of the Rhosus in 2013 when he says the owner told him to make an unscheduled stop in Lebanon to pick up extra cargo.Prokoshev said the ship was carrying 2,750 tonnes of a highly combustible chemical from Georgia to Mozambique when the order came to divert to Beirut on its way through the Mediterranean.The crew were asked to load some heavy road equipment and take it to Jordan's Port of Aqaba before resuming their journey onto Africa…

Georgia has ended an investment agreement with an international consortium for one of the biggest projects in the former Soviet country, the construction of a major deep sea port on the Black Sea coast, its infrastructure minister said on Thursday.The nine-phase project to improve access to Central Asia and the Middle East had received support from Georgia's strategic partner, the United States, as well as the European Union, which had labelled the planned port at Anaklia a priority project."The government discussed this issue and decided that further postponement does not make sense…

Oil and oil-related shipments from Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi dropped 24 percent in the first four months of 2019 from a year earlier, an official at a KazMunaiGas-operated terminal at the port said on Wednesday.Shipments of crude oil and refined oil products from Batumi have fallen in recent years, partly because Azerbaijan prefers to send its oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline or via its own terminal at the Georgian port of Kulevi, rather than from Batumi, which is operated by a Kazakh company.There were no shipments of crude oil, naphtha, jet fuel or vacuum gasoil from Batumi in January-April, the official, who did not want to be identified…

Oil and oil-related shipments from Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi fell 51.2 percent in 2018 from a year earlier, an official at a KazMunaiGas-operated terminal at the port said on Thursday.Some crude oil was re-routed to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium last year, the official added, while some fuel oil was sent to the port of Taman in Russia and Georgia's other Black Sea port of Kulevi.The fall in shipments is partly because Azerbaijan prefers to send its oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline or via its own terminal in Kulevi, rather than from

Louis Dreyfus Company announced the surprise departures of its chief executive and head of finance on Tuesday, triggering another reshuffle at the commodities giant as it strives to recover from weak agricultural markets.The group said in a statement that Gonzalo Ramirez Martiarena had resigned as CEO after three years in the post to pursue other opportunities, and would be replaced with immediate effect by Ian McIntosh, previously chief strategy officer.British national McIntosh…

Oil and oil-related shipments from Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi fell 53.7 percent between January and March from a year earlier, an official at the KazMunaiGas-operated terminal said on Wednesday. The official said some volumes of crude oil had been rerouted to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium this year, while some fuel oil had been sent to the port of Taman in Russia and Georgia's other Black Sea port of Kulevi. About ten Batumi terminal…

Oil and related shipments from Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi in January were down 34 percent from a year earlier, an official at the terminal, operated by Kazakh KazMunaiGas , said on Thursday. The official gave no reason for the fall, but state company KazMunaiGas continued to reroute some shipments to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline this year. January shipments of crude oil and refined oil products from Batumi totalled 108,464 million tonnes, down from 164,218 tonnes a year earlier and 221,210 tonnes in December, said the official, who asked not to be identified.

Turkish maritime authorities have reopened Istanbul's Bosphorus Strait to transiting tankers after shutting it earlier on Saturday for several hours following what the government said was an attempted coup by a faction in the military. The Bosphorus is one of world's most important chokepoints for the maritime transit of oil with over three percent of global supply - mainly from Russia and the Caspian Sea - passing through the 17-mile waterway that connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. It also ships vast amounts of grains from Russia and Kazakhstan to world markets. On Saturday, forces loyal to the Turkish government fought to crush the remnants of a military coup attempt, following violence and clashes in Ankara and Istanbul.

A U.S.-Georgian consortium has been awarded a $2.5 billion contract to build and develop a deep-sea port in Anaklia on Georgia's Black Sea coast, as the tiny ex-Soviet republic sets eyes on lucrative cargo transit from Asia to Europe. The Anaklia Development Consortium is a joint venture of Georgia's TBC Holding LLC and Conti International LLC, a U.S.-based developer of infrastructure and capital projects, Georgia's Economy and Sustainable Development Ministry said in a statement on Monday. The consortium, selected in a tender, aims to start the construction of the port by the end of 2016 and finish it in three years. The port will have the capacity to berth container ships of the 10,000 TEU type and to process up to 100 million tonnes of cargo per year by 2025.

The bodies of six oil workers missing from an Azeri oil platform in the Caspian Sea that caught fire on Friday have been found, the state energy company SOCAR said on Monday. It said a helicopter search for the other missing would continue at daybreak. Out of the 62 people who were on the Guneshli oil rig when the fire started, one was confirmed dead on Sunday and 33 were rescued. Efforts were also continuing to try to put the fire out. "As of now, at least one well is on fire," said Balamirza Alirahimov, chief engineer at Azneft, SOCAR's production union. The fire started on Friday after a storm caused some of the platform's production equipment to collapse, damaging a natural gas pipeline. The platform had daily production of 920 tonnes of oil and 1.08 million cubic metres of gas.

Forty two workers have been rescued from an offshore oil platform that caught fire in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian Sea, Azeri independent TV ANS said on Friday. Azeri state energy company SOCAR was not immediately available to comment. SOCAR said earlier that the fire started after a gas pipeline on the platform was damaged in heavy wind. It said the rescue attempt was being complicated by a heavy storm. One of the workers called a Reuters correspondent from the platform and said there were 84 people trapped. The worker did not want to be named. SOCAR also said earlier that workers were missing after an accident at another offshore oil platform during the storm. A search-and-rescue operation was underway, it added.

Three workers are missing after an accident at an offshore oil platform in the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, Azeri state energy company SOCAR said on Friday.   SOCAR said a small cabin, where workers were living, was washed into the sea from the platform during a heavy storm.   "The accident did not affect the oil production process," the SOCAR spokesman, Nizameddin Guliyev, told reporters.   He said that a search-and-rescue operation was underway.   Four workers were killed and one went missing after a fire broke out on SOCAR's other oil and gas platform in the Caspian Sea in Oct. 2014. (Reporting by Nailia Bagirova; writing by Margarita Antidze; editing by Jane Merriman)

BP has suspended operations at Chirag, one of its platforms in the Caspian Sea, for planned maintenance, the British oil company said on Tuesday. "Operations at Chirag have been suspended today for planned maintenance for 25 days," BP-Azerbaijan said in a statement. It said the work would maintain the ability of the platform to produce in a safe, reliable and environmentally sound way and added that oil exports would continue according to the schedule. Chirag is one of the main offshore oilfields in Azerbaijan operated by BP.

A Georgian court has taken control of the Black Sea oil terminal at Batumi after a legal case brought by shipping operators, a port official said on Monday. The terminal is still operating but since Saturday has been under the control of the court which is dictating certain conditions about contracts, which plaintiffs said had been often changed by the owner-operator, Kazakh state energy company KazMunaiGas . Reuters was unable to reach KazMunaiGas for comment. "Yes, the property has been seized ... The terminal is working with some minor disruptions, but there is a risk that shipments may decline due to the situation," Batumi terminal Deputy Director Georgy Kiladze told Reuters. "There is no force majeure ... The terminal continues its work," he added.

Crude oil and refined oil product shipments from Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi fell 22.7 percent in 2014 from a year earlier, a senior official at the terminal said on Monday. Bad weather in Kazakhstan, where the oil is produced, lower-than-expected output from the Kashagan oilfield at the beginning of the year and re-routing part of oil shipments to the Baku-Tbilisi Ceyhan pipeline contributed to the decline, said the official, who declined to be identified. The Batumi terminal, operated by Kazakh state energy company KazMunaiGas , shipped 4.355 million tonnes of oil and oil products last year, down from 5.634 million tonnes in 2013. Shipments in December were 441,675 tonnes, down from 457,033 tonnes in December 2013, but up from 423,940 tonnes in November.

Crude oil and refined product shipments from Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi were down 24.6 percent in the first 10 months of the year from a year earlier, a senior official at the terminal said on Monday. Bad weather in Kazakhstan, where the oil is produced, and lower-than-expected output from the Kashagan oilfield at the beginning of the year contributed to the decline, said the official, who declined to be identified. The Batumi terminal, operated by Kazakh state energy company KazMunaiGas , shipped 3.490 million tonnes of oil and oil products during the 10 months, down from 4.631 million tonnes in the same period of 2013. Shipments in October were 266,791 tonnes, down from 612,751 in October 2013 and from 403,435 in September this year.

Three workers were killed and one is still missing after an accident at one of the offshore oil and gas platforms in the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, Azeri state energy company SOCAR said on Thursday. SOCAR said that one of the platforms collapsed during repair works and a small wagon-house fell into the sea, damaging and causing a fire on a pipeline used for domestic gas deliveries. The fire was extinguished within an hour. There were 41 workers on site: 37 of them were evacuated by a rescue team, while four fell into the sea. "The dead bodies of three workers, missing after an accident at the faulty platform, have been found," SOCAR said. A commission has been created to investigate the accident.

Azeri state energy company SOCAR's shipyard and British oil major BP have signed a $378 million deal to design and build a subsea construction vessel for the Shah Deniz II gas project, BP said on Wednesday. Azerbaijan's biggest gas field, Shah Deniz is being developed by consortium partners BP, Statoil, SOCAR and others. Shah Deniz I has been pumping gas since 2006 and has an annual production capacity of about 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas. The next phase, Shah Deniz II, is important for Europe in terms of providing an alternative to gas supplies from Russia's Gazprom.

Reuters - Azerbaijan's state energy company SOCAR agreed with Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft on transportation tariff at $16 per metric ton, slightly up from a previous $15.67, to be shipped via Russia in 2014, SOCAR's official said. Adnan Ahmadzada, SOCAR's marketing and operations department head, told Reuters in an interview the tariff was fixed in Russian roubles and might change slightly depending on exchange rate fluctuations throughout the year. He said SOCAR was ready to ship 1.0-1.5 million metric tons of oil via Russia this year, reversing plans to halt exports in mid-February. "We also agreed that we would have an opportunity to ship additional transit volumes of oil from third parties," Ahmadzada said.

Venezuelan authorities said they will release a U.S.-operated  oil-exploration survey vessel Teknik Perdana and its 36 crew members after detaining the ship last week, multiple sources reported. The 285-foot vessel was taken into custody while conducting a seismic study in resource-rich waters that are allegedly part of a centuries-old border dispute between Venezuela and its neighboring country Guyana. Teknik Perdana was said to be on hired for Guyana in its own territory when Venezuelan naval patrol seized the survey vessel Thursday, claiming it was trespassing on its national waters.

Venezuela has agreed to free a U.S.-chartered oil survey ship and 36 crew members seized last week in a territorial dispute with neighboring Guyana, reports Reuters, citing the vessel's owner. Venezuela accused the Teknik Perdana of violating its maritime territory, reviving a century-old dispute with Guyana, as the vessel carried out a seabed survey for Texas-based Anadarko in conjunction with Guyanese authorities, when Venezuela's navy boarded it on Thursday and escorted it to Margarita Island. However, Reuters add that according to the Venezuela Public Prosecutor's Office the ship's Ukrainian captain, Igor Bekirov, had been charged at Margarita with failing to respect the boundaries of a security zone.