Special Reports

Peru has joined Mexico, Nigeria, the Ukraine and a host of other countries, including the United States, confronting vandals who tap into pipeline systems to steal the hydrocarbons inside.

Mexico is experiencing an epidemic of pipeline thefts: This past year, fuel thieves drilled 10,363 illegal taps into state-owned pipelines, or an average of about 28 illegal taps every day. And as one observer noted, these are just the taps that have been found.

A gas pipeline running through the Ugbokodo community in the Okpe Local Government Area and operated by the Nigerian Gas Company exploded several weeks ago, causing extensive material damage but sparing the loss of any human lives.

Management of the Nigerian Gas Company, NGC, has already begun the process of fixing the gas pipeline.

An order of Roman Catholic nuns near Columbia in Pennsylvania has vowed to continue its protest against the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline, a $3 billion, 187-mile project to carry fracked natural gas from wells in the Marcellus Shale formation of Pennsylvania to markets along the East Coast.

The Yalu River running through Manchuria has long served as the well-known border between China and North Korea. What is less known, but equally significant, is the short, aging 30 km Friendship Pipeline constructed in part under the Yalu.

In yet another effort to enhance European energy security by diversifying sources away from Russia, a consortium of countries including Cyprus, Italy, Greece and Israel will build an 1900 km gas pipeline from the Levantine Basin in the eastern Mediterranean to Greece and Italy in 2025.

From 12-14 March 2018 Berlin will again host Europe’s leading pipeline conference and exhibition. The 13th edition of the Pipeline Technology Conference (ptc) provides a comprehensive overview of all developments in the onshore and offshore pipeline industry – covering planning & design, construction, operation and maintenance.

Last week between 9,350 and 9,750 barrels of crude oil shot out of a fractured underwater pipe in the Gulf of Mexico some 64 km from Venice, Louisiana.

LLOG Exploration Offshore, the offshore oil and gas operator, says the pipe is connected to a subsea well and that the leak has ceased.

After losing Kirkuk's prodigious oil fields to ISIS during the terrorists' Blitzkrieg three years ago and ultimately to rebellious Kurds after ISIS was evicted, the federal government in Baghdad has reasserted its sovereignty over the area and is now planning a "comprehensive and accelerated" rehabilitation plan for Kirkuk's crude oil pipeline network.

The U.S. Gulf Coast is recovering slowly from the damage done by Hurricane Harvey. On Monday, a key segment of the American fuel system will restart operations after devastating rains caused heavy damage to infrastructures in all of Texas.

The northern Persian Gulf has been hit with a series of major oil spills, affecting Kuwait and Saudi Arabia with an estimated 35,000 barrels of crude in the first incident and an undetermined amount in the second, which followed two days later..

There is more than just one way to protest and delay a pipeline. In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a group of Catholic nuns is fighting against a natural gas pipeline that would run beneath land they own in a unique way by setting up an open-air chapel for people to visit.

A bold gang set up a makeshift refinery in the grounds of Boris Johnson’s ministerial Chevening estate in order to steal hydrocarbon fuel from a network of underground pipes. Petrol, diesel and aviation fuel was also stolen from pipelines across Essex, Hampshire, Northamptonshire, and Cheshire over a 17-month period.

Forced industrialization in the whole region has led to high demand for investment, in particular in the energy and water supply sectors. Realization of the projects require a lot of know-how and appropriate technologies. This presents a wealth of opportunities for European and international businesses to engage with the region and to create long-term partnerships.

The Saudi - led group of countries severing diplomatic relations with Qatar today will have no significant impact on the price of oil, according to Alastair Newton, of Alavan Business Advisory in Livingstone, Zambia.

Newton said there is a large surplus on the supply side relative to the demand side and that this will continue to exert downward pressure on the price.