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• China nurtures Mideast oil relations

  December 2009

  - Chinese national oil companies are developing upstream and downstream relationships across the Middle East, as the country endeavours to secure steady oil supplies, writes Digby Lidstone

• Exploration and production

  November 2009

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Africa

Algeria

Sonatrach appears to be moving forward with its long-delayed plan to construct a new 300,000 b/d refinery at Tiaret. The national oil company short-listed four contractors – CB&I Lummus, a Saipem-Chiyoda partnership, Sinopec and Technip – for the facility's front-end engineering and design contract. Sonatrach also short-listed a number of contractors for an expansion project at the Algiers refinery.

Angola

Argentina's Pluspetrol, which took over from Roc as operator of the onshore Cabinda South block in April, re-entered the Coco-1 well last month for an extended production test. The well, drilled into a pre-salt structure in 2008, flowed oil and gas, but there were down-hole problems. Pluspetrol is also preparing to drill another pre-salt exploration well, Castanha-1. In November, Roc farmed out 5% of its interest in the block to Cuba's state-owned Cuba Petróleo, interests becoming Pluspetrol, 45%, state-owned Sonangol, 20%, Force, 20%, Roc, 10% and Cuba Petróleo, 5%.

Egypt