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US oil falls 2% as refiners brace for Hurricane Harvey

24th August 2017

Rigzone/24 August 2017

NEW YORK, Aug 24 (Reuters) – U.S. crude prices fell 2 percent on Thursday as Hurricane Harvey, forecast to come ashore as the strongest storm to hit the U.S. mainland in 12 years, threatened oil operations along the energy hub on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

U.S gasoline futures, however, jumped 2.8 percent and gasoline cash prices in the Gulf Coast rose to the highest levels in almost a year on fears of the hurricane and flooding damaging refineries.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said that Harvey was rapidly intensifying and expected to make landfall Friday night or early Saturday on the Texas coast, whilst warning of a storm surge or the danger of life-threatening flooding.

Harvey is forecast to come ashore as a Category 3 hurricane, the NHC said, with winds of up to 129 miles (208 km) per hour. Hurricane Wilma, which struck Florida in 2005, was the last Category 3 hurricane to make landfall in the United States.

“There are worries about the effect of Harvey,” said Gene McGillian, manager of market research at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut. “Refineries might go down because of flooding.”

Around 10 percent of the Gulf Coast region’s approximately 9.75 million barrels per day of refining capacity was shut in, according to a Reuters estimate.

Two refineries in Corpus Christi, Texas – Flint Hills Resources’ 296,470 barrels per day plant and Citgo Petroleum’s 157,000 bpd plant – were shutting down operations in preparation of the storm.

Exports of oil and condensates would also be affected as NuStar Energy and Magellan Midstream Partners were also shutting down their Corpus Christi terminals ahead of Harvey.

U.S. crude futures settled 98 cents lower at $47.43 a barrel and Brent crude ended down 53 cents a barrel, or 1 percent, at $52.04.

Storm preparations, however, also shut in crude production, which was supportive.

Almost 10 percent, or the equivalent of 167,231 bpd, of current oil production in the U.S. of Mexico has been shut in, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said.

Royal Dutch Shell, Anadarko Petroleum and Exxon Mobil have all taken steps to curb some oil and gas output at platforms in the Gulf.

Onshore, Statoil said it was evacuating staff from the Eagle Ford shale region and will close wells on a case-by-case basis depending on flooding risk. [nL2N1LA190

ConocoPhillips also said it was suspending drilling the Eagle Ford sand idling five rigs ahead of the hurricane.

A slightly stronger dollar, which makes greenback-denominated crude more expensive for buyers in other currencies, also weighed on the oil market as investors eyed a meeting of central bankers that begins on Thursday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The meeting, which could signal changes to monetary policy, will include speeches by U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on the outlook for monetary policy and interest rates.

 

News Source: Rigzone

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Greater engagement needed to keep oil, gas staff

24th August 2017

Rigzone/24 August 2017

Greater engagement from oil and gas employers is needed in order to retain industry workers.

“It’s going to come about through sharing goals and vision,” Petroplan CEO Rory Ferguson told Rigzone.

The Petroplan CEO also highlighted traits that employees find important, as outlined in the company’s latest Talent Insight Index.

“It’s training, it’s investment in their future,” Ferguson stated.

A Petroplan representative shared Ferguson’s views on retaining oil and gas staff, telling Rigzone that more needed to be done by companies to appease employees.

“There needs to be dialogue going on between companies and their employees giving them that sense of community and a sense of security,” the spokesperson said.

The recently released Talent Insight Index revealed that over 75 percent of oil and gas industry professionals are ready to move jobs.

“Employers need to give them reasons to stay … The retention of good mid-career people in the sector is at threat,” the report claimed.

Looking to the future of the industry, Ferguson also outlined some concerns regarding the next generation of oil and gas professionals.

“It’s probably fair to say the appetite in some of the younger generation isn’t probably leaning towards oil and gas in the way that it might have a few years ago,” Ferguson said.

“I think there’s a really, really interesting pinch-point coming our way in terms of the availability of relevant talent in this sector,” he added.

In an effort to get millennials interested in the industry, Ferguson suggested a marketing change for oil and gas.

“It’s an easy villain in today’s world … I just don’t think we promote ourselves in this sector particularly well,” Ferguson said.

“What is the industry’s contribution to the world today? … I bet there’s not many industries that probably spend more on conservation for example, than oil and gas, but do we talk about that? No, we don’t … there’s definitely work to be done,” he added.

A Petroplan representative even suggested that the next generation of oil and gas professionals could help the environmental cause via the industry.

“If you look at the younger generation, they are more environmentally aware than any generation before and there’s huge opportunities for them to use their talent through digitalization to ensure that the future of the oil and gas business is even more environmentally friendly and sustainable going forward,” the spokesperson stated.

Petroplan’s report also outlined that the emergence of digitization and Big Data has increased the need for IT skills in the sector, with 34 percent of respondents citing that these are a growing requirement.

As a result, the report outlines that attracting digital natives to the sector is a priority.

“The apprehension for the oil and gas sector is that the skills required for this new age of digital oil and gas fields differs vastly from what has long been the traditional skillset,” the Talent Insight Index stated.

“To elevate the skills of the workforce will require a combination of recruiting fresh talent from outside the oil and gas sector, including data scientists, software engineers and other digitally savvy professionals, as well as teaching new skills to the operational staff already within the industry,” the report continued.

News Source: Rigzone

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STUDY: One in three SMEs in Singapore hit by ransomware last year

23rd August 2017

HR in Asia/23 August 2017

A third of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore have experienced a ransomware attack last year, a study conducted by Osterman Research found.

Cyberattacks such as WannaCry ransomware were causing worldwide hysteria, as it spreads across the globe. The research revealed that about 21 percent of the business who had been hit by ransomware were forced to cease all business operations immediately. Meanwhile, another 11 percent were losing revenue as a direct result of the attack, according to Malwarebytes’ Second Annual State of Ransomware Report.

The report which surveyed 1,054 SMEs across Singapore, France, the UK, Germany, Australia and North America noted that more than half of the cybercriminals (53 percent) who raid SMEs in Singapore with ransomware ask for payment of less than US$1,000, while only 7 percent asking for sums more than US$10,000, Business Times reports.

About one-third of Singapore SMEs (33 percent) who refused to pay the ransom were losing access to their files and databases as result. The cyberattack was not only financially disadvantageous, as it hampered the business’ efficiency and employee’s productivity as well. According to the study, more than 61 percent companies in Singapore hit by the attack experienced downtime of more than nine hours from a single incident of ransomware, which means that they lose a full working day.

Ransomware remains to be top digital security problem for SMEs in Singapore, along with malware infiltration through email, with 72 percent respondents stating that they are

SMEs in Singapore ranked ransomware as their top security problem along with malware infiltration through email, with majority of respondents (72 percent) indicating that they are critical problems. The other issues they face include email phishing (70 percent) and malware infiltration via Web browsing (64 percent).

However, despite being a top concern, only one out of 10 (9 percent) companies were confident that they would be able to stop the ransomware attacks. Additionally, a third of respondents (30 percent) that had been affected by ransomware previously indicated they did not even know how they could be infected.

 

News Source: HR in Asia

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Oil up more than 1% on eighth weekly US crude drawdown

23rd August 2017

Rigzone/23 August 2017

NEW YORK, Aug 23 (Reuters) – Oil prices rose on Wednesday after U.S. crude inventories declined for the eighth straight week and as a storm approached the Gulf Coast with the potential to disrupt oil and refined products output.

Brent crude futures settled up 70 cents to $52.57 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were trading at $48.41, up 58 cents.

U.S. crude inventories fell 3.3 million barrels last week, compared with analyst expectations for a decrease of 3.5 million barrels. Crude stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub fell 503,000 barrels, the Energy Information Administration said.

“Oil inventories continue their downward trend despite a significant increase in crude oil imports this week,” said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston.

Still he said, the market is shrugging off the inventory draws, which are approaching 75 million barrels since March, plus another 15 million from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

“It continues to wait to see more confirmation from around the world that inventories are indeed declining,” Lipow said.

The market was also eyeing a tropical depression, said Gene McGillian at Tradition Energy in Stamford.

Harvey, formerly a tropical storm, has regenerated into a tropical depression and could strengthen further into a hurricane on Friday, the National Hurricane Center said.

The system is located about 470 miles (755 km) southeast of Port Mansfield, Texas with maximum sustained winds of 35 miles per hour (55 km/h), the NHC said.

Tradres have paid close attention to production from Libya’s Sharara oilfield, the conflict-riven country’s largest, where output has been seesawing.

The field remained shut on Wednesday, two Libyan oil sources told Reuters. It had restarted at least once on Tuesday amid conflicting reports about whether it had reopened.

“(The) flood of news reports makes it clear that the situation in Libya is still chaotic and that conditions in the country are still far from normal,” Commerzbank analysts wrote.

Sharara recently reached output of 280,000 barrels per day (bpd), but closed this week due to a pipeline blockade. Its production is key to Libya’s oil output, which surged above 1 million bpd in late June, about four times its level last summer.

Libya’s rising output is a headache for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which together with non-OPEC producers including Russia have pledged to cut around 1.8 million bpd of supplies between January this year and March 2018 in an attempt to remove a global glut.

 

News Source: Rigzone

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Tasmania can lead the way in renewable energy, Turnbull says

19th August 2017

The Guardian/19 August 2017

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has trumpeted Tasmania’s ability to lead the country in renewable energy at the state’s Liberal party council meeting.

On Saturday, Turnbull addressed 250 delegates at the annual conference in Launceston, the party’s final gathering before a state election in March.

He praised Liberal premier Will Hodgman’s economic management in a speech that touched on energy, terrorism and mental health.

“You have here the best wind resources in the nation and the biggest hydro scheme in the nation,” he said, alluding to a study into increasing the Apple Isle’s hydro electricity production, due to be completed by the end of the year.

“Tasmania can play a massive role in the electricity market across the nation. You can see a future for great connectivity as part of a national network.”

Turnbull also sunk the boot into the Labor party, imploring voters to retain the first-term Hodgman government.

“The track record of Labor incompetence is something you can’t have inflicted on the state,” he said before receiving a standing ovation from the party faithful.

Recent polling has shown the gap between the Liberal party and Labor in Tasmania is the closest it’s been in seven years, and the opposition leader, Rebecca White, is the state’s preferred premier.

 

News Source: The Guardian

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Electricity retailer selling plans with ‘discounts’ on artificially inflated prices

18th August 2017

The Guardian/18 August 2017

An electricity retailer is selling plans with “discounts” on prices that have been arbitrarily inflated, resulting in some customers paying hundreds of dollars more per year on their electricity bills.

The practice highlights a weakness in the recently announced agreement between energy retailers and the government. The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said the companies agreed they would alert customers to the impact on their bills when they come off discounted plans but said nothing about misleading discounts.

Click Energy has retail market offers in Queensland and other states with “discounts” ranging from around 7% to 27%.

But, in the fine print, Click Energy reveals those discounts are not applied to any rate that any customer could actually pay but are instead applied to a made-up rate, apparently in order to make the discount appear large.

Those discounts also only apply if the customer pays the bill within five days of it being issued by Click Energy – after which time they revert to the inflated rate, and are also charged a $12 late payment fee.

The five-day period to achieve the pay-on-time discount, and avoid the late payment fee, is the shortest period the Guardian has seen in retail offers.

Most retailers offer discounts from either their regulated “standing offer” or from another offer that is actually available to customers.

One of Click Energy’s offers in Queensland called “Click Connect” tells customers they are receiving a 7% discount. But, in the fine print, the company reveals that the 7% discount is applied to rates that are 16% higher than the standing offer, meaning the customer is paying a rate significantly higher than the default regulated offer.

In that case, a household that used 8,000 kWh of electricity a year – roughly what a typical Brisbane household uses – would end up paying about $230 more a year on the “discounted” plan than they would on the non-discounted standing offer.

When asked about that plan, the chief executive of Click Energy, Dominic Drenen, said the deal rolled the “new connection fee” into the plan and was marketed to customers who are moving house, and only offered through On the Move – a company that helps people connect utilities to new houses.

Drenen said the connection fee was between $35 and $150 and customers didn’t have to pay that on this plan.

All of Click Energy’s other offers examined by the Guardian also state customers will not be charged the standard connection fee and note the standard connection fee is about $11. The Guardian understands expedited connections could cost more and those appear to be waived in the Click Connect offer.

Click Energy offers a range of other plans, each with stated discounts, but which are discounted from seemingly arbitrary rates. Their Click Opal offer for customers in south-east Queensland is advertised as giving an 18% pay-on-time discount – but in the fine print they say that is applied to a rate that 8.5% above their regulated standing offer.

The Click Topaz offer in the same region is advertised as giving a 22% pay on time discount but the underlying rate is inflated 8.9%.

Drenen said the discount rate wasn’t the whole story, since customers on those plans were offered other bonuses too like food vouchers and movie tickets.

One Big Switch, a company that gathers customers together and helps them switch retailers, is offering a unique Click Energy plan, which claims to have a 27% pay on time discount but, again, the underlying rate is increased by 8.9%.

When asked about the practice of discounting arbitrarily increased prices, Drenen said very few Click Energy customers were on the standing offer, so he didn’t think it was relevant to express the discounts compared to that rate. He did not answer further questions over email about what the rational was for stating the discount percentages that way.

“All Click customers are on discount products, our standing product is for occupiers only (customers in a property that we have been unable to identify),” Drenen said over email.

When the Guardian called Click Energy’s sales team, they said they were able to move customers on to the standing offer and offered to do so over the phone.

In other regions, Click Energy’s offers are sometimes discounted from the standing offer, a practice that appears to be standard in the industry. In 2015, the federal court found Origin Energy was required to pay a $325,000 penalty after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found they were offering misleading discounts.

The ACCC explains on its website: “The court held that the representations were false or misleading because the rates used to calculate usage charges under a DailySaver energy plan, to which the discount would then be applied, were higher than the rates under the subsidiaries standard retail contracts. As a result, consumers who entered into a DailySaver energy plan in early to mid-2013 effectively received a reduced discount.

The ACCC chairman, Rod Sims, said at the time: “Origin misled consumers about the level of discount they would achieve under a DailySaver energy plan – the key feature that would have attracted consumers to the plan.”

The ACCC said it could not comment on the specific issues regarding the Click Energy offers but a spokesman said that businesses “must be clear and upfront to consumers about the discounts they are advertising”.

“It is often not enough to have explanations about how discounts work in fine print as these disclaimers are often difficult for consumers to find or easily missed,” he said.

The CEO of the social enterprise retailer EnergyLocals, Adrian Merrick, said: “It’s just making up numbers to confuse people.”

He said Click Energy’s offers were a more blatant example of a problem that is common in the industry – since deregulation occurred everywhere but the ACT, retailers are able to change their standing offers, meaning a discount percentage can mean very little since the underlying rate can move.

May Mauseth, an energy consultant at Alviss Consulting, said Click’s Click Connect offer in Queensland is the sort of offer customers should avoid.

“The rates are higher than the standing offer rates, the discount only applies if bills are paid on time, the offer includes a $12 late payment fee that the standing offer does not have and Click only gives customers five days to pay their bills,” Mauseth said. “That is a lot less time than what retailers usually give customers.

“Unfortunately, Click is not the only retailer with confusing market offers but this is among the worst I’ve seen.”

The ACCC is currently conducting an inquiry into Australia’s electricity retail market, which includes an examination of any “lack of transparent information”.

In its discussion paper on the topic, the ACCC said: “The complexity of offers themselves and the marketing of offers, in particular the use of discounts, may make it difficult for customers to understand which offer will best suit their needs.”

In submissions to the inquiry, a number of groups including the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (Piac) said pay-on-time discounts were a way of camouflaging late-payment fees.

Piac used its submission to recommend the ACCC review the practice of pay on time discounting and whether the practice is unfairly pushing the cost of hardship programs on to low-income and vulnerable consumers.

When the Guardian asked Drenen what the discounted plans were discounted from, he responded: “Discounts from a range of product constructs that incorporate features that are valuable to that particular channel or market segment (eg moving customers, channel partners, good food promotions etc.).”

When asked how the offers differed from those of Origin that were ruled misleading by the federal court in 2015, he responded: “Each product is unique and tailored to a market segment, not a generic single market offer.”

When the Guardian put it to Drenan that underlying rates appeared to be arbitrarily inflated to make the discounts appear larger, he responded: “Each product is unique and tailored to a market segment, not a generic single market offer.”

In response to the Merrick’s allegation that the offers were confusing, Drenen said every customer that has joined Click Energy has “chosen to do so for the benefits we offer over our competitors”.

He listed monthly smooth billing, email bills, discount on total bill, digital customer service portal and local service centre. “These all have a value ascribed to them that will be different for each customer.”

Joel Gibson from One Big Switch said the discount was important but “only half the story”.

“We always tell consumers that you have to look at the combination of the discount and the underlying rates to assess if it’s a good offer,” he said. “That’s what we do when we analyse offers and select winners for our campaigns.”

 

News Source: The Guardian

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SURVEY: Singapore workers less satisfied with employers than global average

16th August 2017

HR in Asia/16 August 2017

Singaporeans are less happy with their companies compared to workers in other countries, according to recent survey published yesterday (Aug 15).

Conducted by of human resource consulting firm Mercer, the study revealed that employee engagement in the city state showed consistent decline over the past three years, which is in glaring contrast to the increasing trend observed across the globe.

Only 73 percent of Singaporean respondents in the poll are satisfied with the companies they work for, compared with higher global average of 82 percent, Straits Times reports.

Additionally, employees in Singapore are less likely to endorse or promote their organisations as good employers. While 76 percent workers in the Asia-Pacific region agree to advocate their firms as good places to work, only 68 percent Singapore employees are willing to do so.

Mr Kulshaan Singh, Mercer Singapore chief executive said that, “Improving employee engagement continues to represent a significant opportunity – not just for businesses, but also for the economy as a whole. This is widely acknowledged.”

He added, “The decline is primarily due to the lower feelings of pride in and satisfaction with organisations, and our analysis shows that such views are largely driven by the employees’ concerns about innovation and career development.”

Surveyed more than 42,000 employees, the survey represents various industries and jobs from global and local multinational resides in Singapore. The method it used to measure employee engagement is by assessing the level of pride, motivation, as well as commitment that the employees have towars the organisations they work for.

If it is said that performance and productivity are the fruit of combination between individual talent and engagement, then the best way to improve talent is to ensure that they are actively engaged. While this might seem obvious, many organisations are still struggling to build a work environment that will help them boost employee engagement in the workplace.

Mercer stated that an increasing number of employees in Singapore say that they do not get the right opportunities to learn and grow. Meanwhile, 20 percent respondents believe that they are not receiving necessary feedbacks from the higher-ups to make progress and development.

Further, one in three workers feels that personal career goals are difficult to realise in their companies, while 95 percent expect to be recognised and rewarded for a wider range of contributions.

Although it is found that 85 percent employees said they take pride in providing the products and services they offer, 30 percent feel their organisations do not make continuous improvement on these products and services. Particularly, one in three employees considers that the company does not take active role in supporting the development of new ideas.

Nonetheless, attitudes towards employee involvement are notably more positive in Singapore, with 70 percent staff feeling that they are adequately involved in the decision-making process on organisational issues that directly affect them. The figure is higher compared with 67 percent globally.

Managers play a critical role in this perception, with 80 percent employees saying their immediate managers notify them of important information related to their work.

“Engagement represents the best opportunity for Singapore to optimise the human capital it has,” said Mr Singh. “If performance and productivity are a combination of individual talent and engagement, the best way to optimise talent is to ensure it is engaged. Although this seems obvious, many organisations still struggle to build the work environment they need to fully realise engagement in the workplace.”

 

News Source: HR in Asia

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Oil and gas people to quantify financial impact of oil and gas downturn

6th June 2017

OilandGasPeople.com/6 June 2017

The UKs oil and gas industry has been operating amid an industry downturn that has seen tens of thousands of job losses, pay packets slashed in half and other work benefits cut altogether.

Workers who were previously on high salaries may have found themselves unemployed or working for a fraction of their previous wage. This obviously has an impact on mortgage affordability, vehicle affordability and general standard of living.

Oil and Gas People would like to hear from you, to see how the oil and gas downturn has impacted your life (if at all). In our short survey, we will ask you several financial based questions and in return for your time we will enter you into a prize draw for £100 of amazon vouchers.

Thee results of the survey will be turned into a feautred news article and for completing it you can enter into a free prize draw for £100 of Amazon gift vouchers. If you would like to take part in the survey,  please click the link below:

 

News Source: OilandGasPeople.com

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April bank lending rises 7% year on year

1st June 2017

The Straits Times/1 June 2017

Bank lending in April grew at its fastest pace in more than two years, driven by a pick-up in both business and consumer loans amid a better economic outlook.

Total bank loans rose to $631.2 billion, up 7 per cent compared with $589.8 billion in April last year, according to preliminary data from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) yesterday.

This marked the largest year-on- year increase since December 2014. Bank lending growth has been picking up in recent months, rising 5.2 per cent year on year in February and 6.3 per cent in March.

This comes as Singapore’s economic growth outlook seems to be taking a turn for the better.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry has said that this year’s growth is likely to be above 2 per cent. That sits at the higher end of its 1 to 3 per cent forecast for the full year and surpasses last year’s modest 2 per cent.

Lending to businesses expanded for the fifth straight month in April to $379.4 billion, a 9.5 per cent rise from a year earlier. Manufacturing-sector loans slid 6.8 per cent, but this was offset by strong increases elsewhere.

Lending to business-services firms surged 27.1 per cent to $8.7 billion, while loans to financial institutions went up 28.1 per cent year on year to reach $90.1 billion.

Loans to the general commerce sector rose year on year for the third consecutive month, growing 17.2 per cent from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, consumer loans rose 3.6 per cent year on year in April to reach $251.8 billion, supported mainly by an increase in mortgages and credit-card interest payments.

Housing and bridging loans rose 4 per cent year on year to reach $193.4 billion, while credit-card loans grew to $10.4 billion from $9.8 billion a year earlier.

Car loans also ticked up, rising 1.3 per cent year on year to $7.9 billion.

Economists had previously noted that the recalibration of some property cooling measures in March could lend further momentum to loan growth in the coming months.

 

 

News Source: The Straits Times

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Vietnam refinery operator valued at $3.2 bln ahead of IPO

1st June 2017

Business Times/1 June 2017

Vietnam’s sole refinery operator Binh Son Refinery (BSR) said on Thursday it has been valued at US$3.21 billion as at end-2015, as it prepares for an initial public offering (IPO) late this year.

The valuation will form the basis for calculating the share price of Binh Son, which operates the Dung Quat oil refinery, Vietnam’s only operating refinery, and is also looking to attract strategic investors.

Communist Vietnam has slowly been pushing its state-owned enterprises to privatise to boost performance. The process has gained more momentum since a new government took office last year.

BSR said on Thursday that it plans to sell 5-6 per cent of the company to the public in an IPO scheduled for the last quarter of this year.

Chairman Nguyen Hoai Giang told Reuters the government had recently allowed the refinery operator to sell more than half of the company to either foreign or domestic strategic investors, giving a potential buyer a controlling stake.

“I think that’s a very open policy and will attract strategic investors strongly,” Mr Giang said. “The general psychology of strategic investors is to want to have the right to decide big issues, macro issues, as well as daily operational issues.” BSR had so far talked to Japan’s JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp, South Korea’s SK Energy Co and Russia’s Gazprom Neft among others on potential strategic stake sale, but the talks had not progressed.

“We couldn’t find a common voice…It’s not an easy process because Dung Quat’s capital is very big,” Giang said.

BSR’s net profit fell 27 per cent in 2016 to 4.49 trillion dong (S$273.7 million), the company’s financial statements showed.

 

News Source: Business Times

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