Air strike kills kidnappers, hostages in Algeria

Thirty-four hostages and 15 kidnappers has been killed when Algerian army helicopters bombed a gas complex where Islamists were holding more than 40 foreign hostages, one of the kidnappers told Mauritania’s ANI news agency.

According to Algeria’s Ennahar television, 15 foreigners, including a French couple, succeeded in escaping, along with about 30 Algerians.
A group calling itself the "Battalion of Blood" stormed the gas pumping station — operated by British Petroleum, Norway’s Statoil and Algeria’s state company — and its employee barracks before dawn. The group said it had seized more than 40 foreigners, including Americans, Japanese and Europeans.

Iraq considering BP for work on Kirkuk oil field

An Iraqi oil official says the country is considering a proposal for British oil giant BP to begin work on a major oil field that lies in territory contested by Baghdad and the minority Kurds.

The head of the Oil Ministry's petroleum contracts and licensing division, Abdul-Mahdi al-Ameedi, told reporters that the plan aims to boost output at the Kirkuk oil field, where production has been declining.

He says BP's offer has been sent to the Cabinet for consideration, though no deal has been approved yet.

BP spokesman Toby Odone says Iraq requested a proposal for work at the field. He declined to give details, including about the scale of any potential investment.

Oil pushes higher in wake of Algeria attack

Crude-oil futures drifted back into positive territory finding underlying support following an attack by militants on a natural-gas field in Algeria that raised supply concerns.

In Europe, light, sweet crude for February delivery rose 40 cents, or 0.4%, to $94.64 a barrel in electronic trading. The trading was choppy, with the February contract earlier in negative territory.

The militants, with possible links to al Qaeda, seized about 40 foreign hostages including several Americans at a remote gas field in Algeria. An effort by Algerian security forces to storm the facility failed.

The attack leaves around 24 million cubic meters a day of gas and 60,000 barrels a day of liquids production offline, delivering another blow to Algeria’s stagnating gas industry.

February natural-gas futures rose 0.2% to $3.61 per million British thermal units.

PPMC: Nigeria lost about N165bn to pipeline vandalism in 4 yrs

Pipelines and Products Marketing Company Limited, PPMC, has said that the economy had lost about N165 billion in the last four years to pipeline vandalism. The sum includes the cost of repairs and products theft.
Managing Director of PPMC, Mr. Haruna Momoh, at the commissioning of four units of triple agent fire-fighting trucks at its Mosimi Depot, Ogun State, noted that the activities of vandals at Arepo and products theft across the country had become a recurring national embarrassment and had cost the country, N165 billion between 2009 and 2012. He added that on a number of occasions, the vandals at Arepo, who have become notorious in their operations, attacked personnel of PPMC with guns and other dangerous weapons, and prevented them from fixing the damaged pipelines.
This, he said, led to the death of a number of personnel over the years and had brought about a huge cost on PPMC, the marketing arm of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, in the area of repair of the vandalised pipelines.

$7.5bn refinery for Cross River

A Chinese firm, Sino Arab Energy, SAE, in partnership with a local firm, Osabo Refining and Petrochemical Industry Limited, have concluded plans to build a refinery in Akabuyo, Local Government Area of Cross River State.

Agreement s for the construction of the refinery which is expected to refine 107,000 barrel of crude per day have been signed by the partnering firms, and is valued at about $7.5billion.

Speaking on the project, Hon Etim Effiong Okon, who is a member of the management team of Osabo Refining, said the process for the procurement of requisite licenses to establish and operate the refinery had fully commenced, while Akwa Esuk Eyamba, the community where the refinery will be located had donated 500 hectares of land for the refinery.

The refinery is expected to be completed within five years, with the first phase slated to commence in 2014, while the feedstock for the refinery would come from the several Niger Delta basin oil wells.