Afroil - Africa Oil & Gas Monitor

Top story from 07 September 2010, Week 35 Issue 355

Dana Gas makes fourth 2010 gas discovery in Nile Delta

UAE-based Dana Gas on September 5 announced its fourth gas discovery in Egypt this year with the South Abu El Naga-1ST well in the West El Manzala concession.

In a statement, Dana Gas said the well had encountered 7.2 metres and 12.6 metres of net pay in the Abu Madi Upper and Lower formations respectively. It also discovered 4.8 metres of net pay in the Kafr El Shaikh formation.

A multi-rate test on the Abu Madi Lower formation yielded a production rate of 19.4 million cubic feet (550,000 cubic metres) per day of gas and 1,160 bpd of condensate, the company said.

Preliminary reserves for the well are estimated at 50-90 billion cubic feet (1.4-2.5 billion cubic metres) of natural gas and 1-2 million barrels of condensate. Dana said it would conduct further appraisal of the South Abu El Naga-1ST well and then consider the development options.

Earlier this year Dana Gas reported gas discoveries at the El-Pansieya-1, South Farashur-1 and Ward Delta-1 wells.

Furthermore, Dana Gas said on September 5 that new production had commenced in August at the Sharabas and Farashkur fields through the El Wastani gas plant. The development brings Dana Gas’s total production in Egypt to 230 million cubic feet (6.5 mcm) per day of natural gas and 7,000 bpd of condensate and LPG. This is the equivalent of 45,500 bpd, marking a production increase of 20% over output at the start of the year.

Dana Gas Egypt’s president, Hany Elsharkawi, said in the statement: “The discovery at the South Abu El Naga-1ST well adds significantly to the company’s hydrocarbon reserves. The rapid development of the Sharabas and Faraskur fields has brought a good rise in production levels, which have been steadily increasing over the last three years.”

In January, the company reported that it had successfully reached its production target for Egyptian operations, which averaged more than 40,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day at the end of December 2009. Overall production for 2009 averaged 34,750 boepd, a 20% increase over 2008.

Dana Gas drilled 12 exploration wells during 2009 and reported eight discoveries.

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 Asia Oil & Gas Monitor

Top story from 01 September 2010, Week 34 Issue 240

Pertamina to seek loan for capital expenditure

Indonesian state-owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina will seek a US$1.5 billion loan, as its planned bond issue has been postponed until the first quarter of 2011, a top company official has revealed.

In mid-July, Pertamina said that it would issue US dollar-denominated global bonds worth US$1.5 billion in September as part of efforts to raise funds for capital expenditure, primarily investment in the upstream sector.

The planned global bond issue has been delayed significantly. Pertamina had initially planned to sell the bonds during the first half of 2010.

The company has already appointed three securities firms – Citigroup, HSBC and Credit Suisse – as underwriters for the global bond issuance.

Pertamina’s president director, Karen Agustiawan, said last week that it was difficult to implement the planned bond issue this year because the company would not be able to complete a financial statement for investors until October at the earliest. “Because the issuance of our US$1.5 billion bonds has been postponed, we are now looking for a loan of the same amount for this year,” Agustiawan was quoted as saying by the state-run Antara news agency. Pertamina’s finance director, Frederick ST Siahaa, had said previously that around 60% of the company’s 2010 capital expenditure would be financed by internal corporate cash flow, while the remainder would be financed by external sources such as bond issuance and bank loans.

Pertamina has been stepping up its efforts to acquire oil and gas assets both at home and abroad recently in a bid to achieve its ambitious medium-term production target.

It will allocate most of its 2010 capital expenditure for its upstream business. The company operates its upstream business through two exploration and production subsidiaries – PT Pertamina EP and PT Pertamina Hulu Energi (PHE).

In May, Agustiawan said that the company needed to acquire promising oil and gas blocks from other operators to achieve its target of boosting production to 700,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2014, compared to about 432,000 boepd at present.

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 China Oil & Gas Monitor

Top story from 01 September 2010, Week 34 Issue 309

PetroChina boosts first-half profits

State-run PetroChina’s first-half net profit rose by 29.4% year-on-year to 65.33 billion yuan (US$9.59 billion), the firm announced last week.

The company’s revenue for the period rose by 64.8% to 684.8 billion yuan (US$100.51 billion) from 415.28 billion yuan (US$60.95 billion) in the same period of 2009.

PetroChina said the improved performance from 2009 was a result of higher international oil prices benefiting its upstream operations.

PetroChina recorded an upstream operating profit of 73.37 billion yuan (US$10.77 billion) in the period, up from 37.64 billion yuan (US$5.52 billion) a year earlier. The company added that the price of its crude had jumped by 71% year-on-year to US$72.42 per barrel from US$42.46.

China’s largest oil and gas producer increased crude production by 1.7% year-on-year to 424.7 million barrels (2.35 million barrels per day). Natural gas production, meanwhile, rose by 12.9% on the year to 1.15 trillion cubic feet (32.57 billion cubic metres).

Conversely, while higher oil prices helped boost PetroChina’s upstream performance, the firm’s downstream activities felt the pinch.

The firm’s refinery business saw profits for the first half of the year slump by 68.3% year-on-year to 5.46 billion yuan (US$801.37 million) from 17.19 billion yuan (US$2.52 billion) earned the year before.

Beijing’s control over domestic retail fuel prices has prevented the country’s state-owned oil giants from passing on the cost of rising crude to the end consumer. Sinopec also felt the pinch, announcing last week that first-half profits from its downstream business had fallen by 71% year-on-year to 5.69 billion yuan (US$835.12 million) from 19.9 billion yuan (US$2.92 million) a year earlier.

PetroChina, the world’s second largest company by market value after ExxonMobil, added that it expected to see further growth in the oil and petrochemical markets in the second half. However, it also warned that international oil prices could fluctuate “drastically,” citing instability in the US dollar as well as market speculation.

PetroChina revealed last week that its overseas oil and gas production had climbed by 8.3% year-on-year to 55.2 million barrels of oil equivalent (305,000 boe per day) in the period.

Both PetroChina and Sinopec have signalled that they plan to continue their respective overseas upstream expansions to offset narrowing downstream margins at home.

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 Europe Oil & Gas Monitor

Top story from 07 September 2010, Week 35 Issue 68

Israel discusses natural gas pipeline to Greece

The excitement generated in Israel by recent offshore gas discoveries and the possibility of finding more has led Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to propose the construction of an underwater gas pipeline to Greece, the Israeli business publication Globes reported on August 30.

Globes said that Netanyahu had raised the idea with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou during a meeting in late August.

In 2009, a consortium led by Houston-based Noble Energy discovered in the offshore Tamar field gas reserves estimated at 8 trillion cubic feet (237 billion cubic metres), enough to meet Israel’s natural gas requirements for roughly 30 years. In October, Noble will begin drilling in the Leviathan prospect, where seismic information suggests reserves could be as high as 16 trillion cubic feet (453 bcm), enough to make exporting the gas a viable proposition. The consortium has estimated the chances of discovery at 50%.

At this point, a project such as an underwater pipeline running thousands of km to Greece remains the subject of speculation, but a recent study by the US Geological Survey has estimated that around 122 trillion cubic feet (3.45 trillion cubic metres) of recoverable natural gas may exist in the Levant Basin in the Eastern Mediterranean, including the areas offshore Cyprus and Lebanon.

Were such a project actually to take shape, the most practical route to Europe might be a pipeline to nearby Cyprus – which anticipates the future discovery of hydrocarbons in its own southern offshore area – and then to mainland Turkey, which it might meet up with one of the Southern Corridor pipeline projects.

However, relations between Israel and Turkey have soured in recent months, particularly since Israel intercepted a Turkish flotilla of aid vessels on their way to the Gaza Strip earlier this year, during which a number of Turkish nationals were killed.

Natural gas produced at the Tamar discoveries is due to enter the Israeli market in 2012. Should the Leviathan-1 well prove successful and if the estimated reserve figure be correct, Israel would be in a position to become a gas exporting country.

With Greece being a member of the EU and itself being traditionally at odds with Turkey, the shipment of Israel gas to the EU would strengthen the latter’s economic connections with Europe, as well as boost its political influence among EU members.

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 FSU (Former Soviet Union) Oil & Gas Monitor

Top story from 01 September 2010, Week 34 Issue 597

Kamchatka to receive gas by 2014

Alexei Miller, the head of Gazprom, recently assured Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that his company was committed to supplying a majority of residential and industrial customers in the Kamchatka region in the Russian Far East by 2014.

According to RIA-Novosti, Gazprom is currently working to finish the construction of the Sobolevo-Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky pipeline, which will serve as the region’s main gas conduit. Miller told Medvedev that he expected to see the link put into operation before the end of September.

The gas pipeline will be 392 km long and will have a capacity of 750 million cubic metres per year. The TETS-2 combined heating and power (CHP) station in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky is expected to be its first customer.

Miller said that the launching of the pipeline would have a positive social impact, as it would allow Kamchatka to eliminate its dependence on other fuels that must be supplied from outside regions. This will reduce the risk of supply shortages and disruptions and “boost the confidence and stability of energy and heating supplies to the peninsula,” Miller commented.

Financing for the construction of the pipeline is being provided jointly by Gazprom and the Kamchatka regional administration, with each party contributing half of the budget.

Plans for starting gas deliveries to Kamchatka were outlined in 2007, in the Industry and Energy Ministry’s gasification programme for Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. This document calls for Gazprom to explore and develop the Kshukskoye and Nizhne-Kvakchinskoye fields off the western coast of the Kamchatka peninsula and to construct a main pipeline to bring gas from the fields to consumers in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

Currently, gas accounts for less than 1% of the region’s total energy consumption.

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 Global Carbon Emissions Monitor

Top story from 02 September 2010, Week 34 Issue 183

UK amends VAT for carbon

The UK government has introduced reverse charges to value-added tax (VAT) on the trading of carbon dioxide emissions allowances.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the British tax authority, will implement the changes from November 1, replacing a zero tax rate on carbon trading that was brought in last year to prevent fraud in the carbon markets.

The UK had been waiting for an EU-wide directive to provide a reverse charge option, which was finally adopted by member states in March.

In a statement, HMRC said: “Under the reverse charge accounting mechanism, it is the responsibility of the customer, rather than the supplier, to account to HM Revenue & Customs for VAT on supplies of the specified emission allowances.”

The new reverse charge will also apply to the sale of both Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) and Emissions Reduction Units (ERUs) under the EU emissions trading scheme.

The zero VAT rate was introduced as an interim measure last July in a bid to curb escalating carousel fraud in the spot trading of EU carbon permits.

Carousel fraud – also known as missing trader fraud – happens when companies buy carbon permits in one country without paying VAT and sell them in another adding tax to the price and pocketing the difference.

So far, around 30 arrests have been made across Europe and prosecutors are investigating a suspected 5 billion euro (US$6.4 billion) tax fraud.

According to Europol, the cross-border police force, fraudulent carbon trading may have accounted for up to 90% of all market activity in some European countries last year.

The value of the global carbon market fell from US$38 billion in the second quarter of 2009 to US$30 billion in the three months to the end of September after several EU countries cracked down.

Now the UK is following suit and hopes its reverse charging system will eradicate fraud completely.

“The criminal practice of exploiting carbon credits to generate fraudulent VAT repayments was stopped last year when carbon credits were zero-rated for VAT purposes,” said an HMRC spokesperson. “This move was always intended as an interim measure until the legislation necessary to introduce a reverse charge could be put in place.”

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 Global LNG Monitor

Top story from 02 September 2010, Week 34 Issue 134

Qatar targets mid-December to complete LNG plan

Qatar’s oil minister Abdullah al-Attiyah has stated that Qatar will finally reach its long-touted goal of 77 million tonnes per year of LNG production on December 13.

“When we bring online in the very near future Qatargas Trains 6 and 7, having recently brought into operation Rasgas Train 7, Qatar [will] have truly attained LNG capacity of 77 million tonnes per year,” al-Attiyah said in a statement reported by Platts on August 30.

“This achievement represents a great historical event for the state of Qatar and guarantees its place as the biggest LNG producer in the world,” he added.

A celebration will take place at Ras Laffan on December 13, where both the Qatargas and Rasgas plants are located.

Qatar is already the world’s largest LNG exporter with a production capacity of 62 million tonnes per year. Qatargas Trains 6 and 7 – which are intended to supply Europe, Asia and the US – will each add a further 7.8 million tonnes per year. Overall, Qatargas will provide 42 million tonnes per year of Qatar’s LNG production capacity.

According to late July comments by Shell CEO Peter Voser, the production ramp-up to full capacity at Train 7 will take place in early 2011.

Shell owns 30% of the US$8 billion project, with state-run Qatar Petroleum (QP) holding the remaining 70%.

LNG trains typically take several weeks to ramp up to full production because their labyrinths of pipes have to be cooled down before the gas can be chilled to liquid.

Shell said in late 2009 that it had delayed the start-up of Qatargas 4 to late 2010, attributing the move to a struggle by contractors to keep up with the pace of developments in Qatar’s thriving gas industry.

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 LatAmOil - Latin America Oil & Gas Monitor

Top story from 07 September 2010, Week 35 Issue 329

Praxair to fight US$1.3 billion fine in Brazil

The Brazilian subsidiary of US industrial gas supplier Praxair has said it will fight a US$1.3 billion fine for anti-competitive practices.

Last week the Brazilian anti-monopoly watchdog, the Brazilian Administrative Council for Economic Defence (CADE), imposed the fine on Praxair subsidiary White Martins for price fixing going back to 1993.

It is the largest fine in the history of CADE, which claims that White Martins headed up a cartel of companies including AGA, Air Liquide, Air Products and Industria Brasileira de Gases that sought to fix prices in the hospital gas sector.

The four companies judged to be part of the cartel with White Martins were fined a collective US$400 million. The report said it had found evidence of an “international oligopoly,” which worked to fix prices in the sector. “We concluded that this is a very sophisticated and very organised cartel,” said the CADE report.

Brazilian police is also investigating the cartel for criminal offences, with eight officials from companies linked to the group being taken in for questioning. CADE investigators based their findings in part on 75 hours of recordings made by Brazilian police.

White Martins received by far the biggest fine because, according to CADE, it headed up the cartel and was considered a “repeat offender.”

Praxair said it would contest the ruling by CADE.

“Praxair and White Martins are shocked by the fine and absolutely reject all claims, including the allegation that White Martins is a repeat offender,” said Praxair in a statement.

Praxair said the regulator lacked evidence and that references to it being a repeat offender referred to cases not related to the cartel investigation and which were still under appeal.

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 Middle East Oil & Gas Monitor

Top story from 07 September 2010, Week 35 Issue 291

Yemen to offer 15 blocks to investors next month

Yemen is putting the finishing touches on a new oil licensing round scheduled for launch next month.

The country’s Oil Minister Amir al-Aidarous said that 15 offshore blocks would be offered to investors under the latest bid round.

He said the licensing initiative was underpinned by the need to find new oil and gas deposits to offset the fall in production.

“Expanding exploration is one of the priorities of the government,” he was quoted as saying in an interview with Bloomberg.

The government plans to offer the 15 blocks during a two-day conference in Sana’a on October 18-19, he added.

It is not yet clear which areas will be up for grabs, however.

Yemen is the smallest hydrocarbons producer on the Arabian Peninsula, yet relies on oil for 75% of its income.

Crude oil production sunk to 288,000 bpd in 2009, way down from the 440,000 bpd in 2001.

According to al-Aidarous, the drop was caused by a lack of exploration activity during the past decade rather than the lack of resources in the ground.

“There is a decline not because of the non-availability of oil, but because of the absence of an exploration vision,” he told Bloomberg.

Convincing investors will be another matter, however, given the security risks posed by upstream operations in Yemen.

A bid round for 11 offshore blocks was scrapped last August partly because of security concerns relating to the Gulf of Aden and higher insurance rates.

Onshore operations in Yemen also face multiple threats because of the country’s unstable disposition, including a resurgent al-Qaeda.

Security at existing oil and gas sites, including the Yemen LNG facilities, has been stepped up in recent times as a result of the heightened threat.

The minister was cool on the security threats, however. “The oil sector has continued to operate without trouble,” he said. “Some companies have been producing oil for over 20 years without stopping for a single day."

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 NorthAmOil - North America Oil & Gas Monitor

Top story from 01 September 2010, Week 34 Issue 119

USGS provides Piceance, Uinta oil shale figures

The Green River Formations of Colorado’s Piceance Basin hold 1.5 trillion barrels of oil shale in place, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), while the Uinta Basin holds an estimated 1.32 trillion barrels.

The USGS said the figure for the Piceance Basin was almost 50% more than the previous estimate of around 1 trillion barrels.

The USGS recently completed its first comprehensive study of the area since 1989, but cautioned: “much of this previously unassessed resource is of low-grade and is unlikely to be developed.”

The new data were produced because about twice as many oil yield data points were used in the assessment – 2,178 versus 1,083 – which meant new areas of resource were gauged that had too little data in the previous USGS assessment.

The USGS report confirms the Piceance Basin’s position as the world’s top spot for oil shale reserves.

The government agency said the basin was one of three large structural and sedimentary basins holding oil shale resources in the Eocene-aged Green River Formation.

Uinta

The USGS also released a study on the Uinta Basin, shortly after the Piceance Basin. The study on Uinta, in eastern Utah and western Colorado, was estimated to hold 1.32 trillion barrels, only slightly less than those of the Piceance, which lies to the east.

The area holding oil shale in Uinta “is much larger than that of the Piceance,” the USGS said. However, the average values assessed from the Uinta are “significantly lower.” The agency said its findings indicated the oil shale resources in the Uinta Basin were “of lower grade and are more dispersed than the oil shale resources of the Piceance Basin.”

Oil shale is a difficult resource to exploit, as it requires substantial water and energy inputs, making its extraction economically questionable.

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 Unconventional Oil & Gas Monitor

Top story from 06 September 2010, Week 22 Issue 22

Further increase expected in Canadian oil and gas capex

Capital expenditure in Canada’s oil and gas projects is projected to be C$42 billion (US$40.5 billion) in 2010, reflecting a major rebound following the global economic crisis. This would be an increase of 27% on 2009’s investments, which totalled C$33.1 billion (US$31.9 billion).

The latest report issued by Statistics Canada (StatsCan) – the official federal bookkeeper – reported that investments in the unconventional oil sector fell 38% in 2009 to C$11.2 billion (US$10.8 billion), while expenditures in the conventional sector dipped 38.5% to C$21.9 billion (US$21.1 billion) the same period.

One main reason for the decrease in the unconventional sector was the withdrawal of several multi-billion dollar oil sands projects in the western Canadian province of Alberta that were at various stages of implementation.

“Being capital-intensive, oil sands projects were shelved the most,” said a Calgary-based industry executive, adding: “WTI [West Texas Intermediate] prices fell to US$31.41 per barrel [in 2009] and at that price the rate of return is very low, making it difficult for oil companies to take a final investment decision (FID).”

He commented that with WTI prices averaging just above US$75 per barrel, oil sands investments had been ramping up considerably in 2010.

“Ground has already been broken for some of the major projects that were either cancelled or put on the back burner in late 2008/early 2009,” he noted.

Meanwhile, the StatsCan report said that Canada’s crude oil production and equivalent hydrocarbons totalled 87.4 million barrels in June 2010, up 8% from June 2009. Crude oil and equivalent exports were also down 2.6% in June compared with the same month in 2009.

The report said that around “66% of Canada’s total domestic production went to the export market.”

For natural gas, total marketable natural gas output stood at 10.8 billion cubic metres in June, down 4.6% from the same month in 2009, while domestic sales of natural gas increased by 14%.

“Natural gas exports rose 9.9% in June from the same month a year earlier, with exports accounting for about 67% of the total marketable natural gas production,” the report said.

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 AsiaElec - Asia Power Monitor

Top story from 07 September 2010, Week 35 Issue 73

Price cap hits Indonesia’s PLN

Indonesia’s state power monopoly PLN has forecast losses of about US$289 million this year because of a government curb on electricity price rises.

Planned tariff increases this year of 30% were capped at no more than 18% after protests from both domestic and commercial users.

The government’s curb means that the company will end this year with a deficit of at least US$289 million, finance director Setio Anggoro Dewo told local media last week.

Indonesia’s power supply, which is subject to regular blackouts because of lack of capacity and poor infrastructure – even in Jakarta – is heavily subsidised.

PLN announced plans at the beginning of this year to try to achieve financial independence by the end of 2010.

The state firm had sought tariff rises ranging from 30% for poorer domestic users to up to 100% for wealthier business users. The new government approved rises averaging 15%.

A recently approved law now permits private companies in Indonesia to produce and deliver electricity, but PLN remains the sole distributor.

About 90% of PLN’s 41 million customers are households.

PLN said in a statement it wanted the higher tariff increase to raise its income above the cost of power production.

However, the new government-set rate means that while 1 kWh costs US$0.12 to produce, it will retail for only US$0.08, finance director Setio Anggoro Dewo told the Jakarta Post.

He said the tariff rise would merely reduce state subsidies, not ease PLN’s financial dependence.

State subsidising of electricity in 2010 will cost the government US$4.56 billion.

Indonesian Energy Minister Darwin Zahedy Saleh admitted in a parliamentary statement last week that without another a 15% tariff rise in 2011 the annual subsidy cost would increase to US$5.45 billion.

PLN is supposed to be developing an additional 10,000 MW of generating capacity by 2015 but needs more than US$20 billion to finance it.

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 Energo - CEE/FSU Power Monitor

Top story from 01 September 2010, Week 34 Issue 528

MOL and CEZ’s Slovakian power plant receives the go-ahead

MOL and CEZ’s plans to build a new generation of gas-fired thermal power plants (TPPs) across Central Europe were given a boost when they gained approval to build the first plant in Slovakia.

Hungarian business daily Napigazdasag reported last week that CM European Power International, the 50%-50% joint venture founded by MOL and CEZ in 2008, had received permission from the Slovakian Ministry of the Environment to build an 880-MW combined steam and gas cycle TPP.

It will be built adjacent to an oil processing plant run by MOL-owned Slovnaft.

The paper reported that the building was due to commence in June 2011, with the TPP due to go online in 2013.

“In addition, in Bratislava, the current TPP will be modernised and its capacity increased to 160 MW,” said a statement from CEZ on the forming of the joint venture.

Another 800-MW TPP is planned for Szazhalombatta in Hungary. CEZ announced that the expected investment in both projects would reach approximately 1.4 billion euros (US$1.78 billion).

Kornel Sarkadi Szabo, chief analyst of Cashline Securities, said that producing electricity was not MOL’s main strategic goal and that the partnership with CEZ was struck in a bid to defend MOL from a takeover by Austria’s OMV.

“In terms of electricity, MOL could become something approaching a medium-sized player, providing the electricity that the group needs to operate,” said Sarkadi Szabo.

OMV sold on its 21.5% stake in MOL to Russia’s Surgutneftgaz in 2009 at double market the value in a 1.4 billion euro (US$1.78 billion) deal, a controversial move which MOL claims it only became aware of from press coverage.

The deal with CEZ was a way of increasing the number of shares that MOL and friendly parties, such as CEZ, controlled. Now it can play the same role in fighting against a takeover by Surgutneftegaz.

“MOL views partnership-based [expansion] as one of the pillars of its growth model,” the company said in a statement last year, clearly referring to CEZ after Surgutneftgaz purchased its stake in MOL.

“There have not been, nor are there, any strategic or operational relationships between Surgutneftegaz and MOL,” the company added.

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 Renewable Energy Monitor

Top story from 02 September 2010, Week 34 Issue 223

Silicon prices soar

Soaring demand for solar photovoltaics (PV) has pushed silicon prices up to their highest level since December 2009.

After a period of decline, spot prices for polysilicon reached US$56.1 per kg last month, according to the latest Solar Spot Price Survey by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

Prices hit a four-year low in March at US$52.5 per kg, but heavy demand for solar PV, particularly across Europe, is putting renewed pressure on global silicon supply.

BNEF predicts prices will continue to rise throughout the rest of 2010 but then fall again in 2011, as feed-in tariff (FiT) levels – used to incentivise the take-up of solar PV projects – are set to be reduced in Germany, Italy, France and the Czech Republic.

“The current levels of silicon production should be sufficient to meet the record demand of 2010,” said BNEF’s solar analyst, Martin Simonek. “Despite increased demand which is pushing up prices, we do not expect silicon to be chronically in shortage, as new production facilities are being commissioned throughout the year.”

The prices of 125 mm monocrystalline silicon wafers, 156 mm multicrystalline silicon wafers, 156 mm monocrystalline wafers and both mono and multicrystalline silicon cells are also higher than they have been since the end of 2009.

The Solar Spot Price Survey is carried out monthly, asking more than 50 industry participants in confidence about current pricing of silicon, wafers and cells. During the worst of the silicon shortage between 2006 and 2008, prices reached US$250 to US$400 per kg.

Worldwide solar PV installations reached 6,430 MW in 2009 – a 6% growth on the previous year, according to the Marketbuzz 2010 Report from Solarbuzz.

Europe accounted for 74% of world demand, with Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic leading the market. All three countries experienced soaring demand in 2009, with Italy becoming the second largest solar PV market in the world. In contrast, Spanish demand in 2009 collapsed to just 4% of its prior year level.

According to Solarbuzz predictions, the solar PV industry will return to high growth over the next five years. Using the fastest growth forecast, annual solar PV industry revenues could reach US$100 billion by 2014.

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