MOSCOW/DUBAI, May 21 (Reuters) – Russia has been pumping hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day more than Saudi Arabia and is confident it can increase output year on year, Energy Ministry data showed, contradicting a report the kingdom has become the world’s biggest producer.

Data from a Russian energy ministry presentation obtained by Reuters follow a report published over the weekend by the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) – a group set up by oil producers and consumers – showing a sharp drop in Russian output.

JODI data showed Russian production fell from 10.370 million barrels per day (bpd) in December to 9.920 million in March, marginally less than Saudi Arabia’s 9.923 million bpd that month.

But the energy ministry’s data showed daily average output was steady at about 1.41 million tonnes, or about 10.33 million bpd in early 2012, up from 10.31 million bpd in December.

The ministry’s outlook for 2012, based on those production figures, says the country is on track to meet its target of averaging 10.31 million bpd for the year, higher than any month of last year.

“It looks like an issue with JODI methodology,” a Russian source said.

JODI was set by oil producer bodies including the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and consumers such as the International Energy Agency (IEA) to improve the transparency of oil market data. It relies on timely submissions of data from individual government agencies.

DUBAI, May 21 (Reuters) – Iran plans a new oil terminal outside the Strait of Hormuz to protect its exports against potential problems in the Gulf and to boost shipments of Caspian oil, the oil ministry news website said on Monday.

Tehran had threatened to block the vital Gulf oil shipping route during its long standoff with the West over its nuclear programme.

The Shana website reported the head of the Iranian Oil Terminals Company (IOTC), Pirouz Mousavi, saying Iran plans to build a new export terminal at Bandar Jask, on the Gulf of Oman coast of Iran.

It would be connected to the Caspian Sea port of Neka using a 1 million barrel a day pipeline.

Mousavi said the new terminal would enable Iran to export more oil from Caspian producers and provide a fall-back option for Iran’s main export terminal at Kharg Island if there were any problems exporting Iran’s own oil from the Gulf.

“In the event of any type of problem in exporting crude oil from the Kharg terminal, this terminal can provide back up for exports,” Shana quoted him as saying.

Mousavi said the planned terminal outside – would have a storage capacity of 20 million barrels and cost around $2.2 billion to build. Kharg has 22 million barrels of storage.

LONDON (Reuters) – Energy giant Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is not on the finalized list of 47 pre-qualified bidders for the next round of Iraq energy exploration rights, a statement posted on the oil ministry website showed on Thursday.

The world’s largest publicly traded energy company was still on the list in early February but has since been removed, while Syrian General Oil has been added as a pre-qualified bidder.

“The Final Tender Protocol and the definitive model Contract have been issued to all prequalified companies,” Abdul Mahdy Al-Ameedi, director general of the Petroleum Contracts and Licensing Directorate (PCLD), said in a statement.

“We are looking forward to welcoming all participating companies in Baghdad.”

Exxon has angered Baghdad by signing an exploration deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which the central government considers illegal.

Iraq’s oil and gas fields have suffered from decades of neglect because of war and economic sanctions.

The bidding for 12 new exploration blocks, which has been repeatedly delayed but is now due to be held May 30-31, is expected to add 29 trillion cubic feet of gas and 10 billion barrels of oil to Iraqi reserves.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Bolivia is poised to strike fifteen vessels linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines off its shipping register just weeks after IRISL found Bolivian replacements for their Maltese and Cypriot flags.

IRISL, its many subsidiaries and their dozens of ships have been sanctioned by the United States, United Nations and the European Union for their suspected role in transporting military equipment for Tehran.

Merchant ships need a flag from national ship registries to gain access to most of the world’s ports and many fly those of other countries – especially Panama, Liberia, the Bahamas, Malta and Cyprus – to avoid paying taxes in their home countries.

Despite a 2010 U.N. resolution on dealing with Iranian government front companies, until recently Maltese flags still fluttered at the masts of 48 of 144 IRISL vessels identified by the EU, while Cypriot colors flew above 12.

Malta delisted one Iranian tanker, the M.T.Tour, after reports it had loaded up with sanctioned Syrian crude in late March, and threatened to deflag others found violating EU rules.

With Malta and Cyprus coming under increased pressure from to stop flagging Iranian government-linked ships, there has been a flurry of registrations in the last few months half a world away in landlocked Bolivia by two new front companies.

The head of the Bolivian registry told Reuters there was no sign that any of the vessels registered over the last few weeks were Iranian but if there was any evidence of sanctions violating vessels Bolivia would remove them from the list.

DUBAI, April 2 (Reuters) – The hijack success rate for Somali pirates has dropped sharply in recent months, a NATO official said on Monday, due in part to more merchant ships turning to armed security guards, razor wire and water pumps to protect themselves.

Improved international cooperation on combating piracy on land and at sea – covering an area four times the size of the Arabian peninsula – has been the cornerstone of efforts to tackle a problem costing the world economy up to $12 billion a year, a spokesman for NATO’s counter-piracy force in the Indian Ocean said.

“Only six vessels have been pirated for ransom in the last eight months, compared to 36 in the preceding eight,” Lieutenant Commander Mehmet Elyurek told reporters on board the TCG Giresun, the Turkish flagship of the force that operates off the Horn of Africa.

The rate of successful hijack attempts had “almost returned to pre-crisis (2007) levels.”

John Steed, a former head of the United Nations counter-piracy unit, has said a major reason for the drop in the number of vessels hijacked is that the pirates got so rich last year.

But increased use of armed private security guards, and other defences like pirate-pummelling water pumps and razor wire are also helping reduce the number of successful attacks on merchant ships.

“Armed security guards on board the merchant vessels is very effective means of protecting them,” Rear Admiral Sinan Azmi Tosun, the commander of the SNMG2 said. “We welcome all these protection measures.”

DUBAI/KHOBAR (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia is likely to burn less crude in its power plants this summer thanks to rising output from dedicated gas fields and gas that would be associated with any increase in oil output to make up for lower Iranian production.

Last summer the world’s leading oil exporter burned an average of 730,000 barrels a day (bpd) of crude for electricity to keep the population cool in the hottest months from July to the end of September, official figures indicate.

Hundreds of thousands of barrels of the kingdom’s biggest export will again go up in smoke at power plants each day this summer, but the volume of oil used for power is likely to fall.

More supply from the Karan gas field and a likely rise in crude output, which would bring a bonus benefit of more gas as well, should save at least 100,000 bpd in crude use.

“We have spent a lot of money on gas … and we have many tricks in our pocket in the summer. When we peak in summer, we will surge our gas,” Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said last week.

Naimi said some 500 million cubic feet a day (mcfd) more gas, or around 90,000 barrels of oil equivalent (boed), would be made available for three or four months.

“So don’t think we are just saying, ‘OK, the crude demand is going to go up’,” he told reporters in Doha. “We are far more concerned about crude burn. Not because we want to export it, but because it is a shame to burn it.”

DUBAI (Reuters) – An Iranian bulk carrier of Brazilian sugar was hijacked in the eastern Indian Ocean early on Monday with 23 crew on board, international shipping monitors said.

The Eglantine, which according to Reuters shipping data loaded in Rio de Janeiro in late February, was hijacked off India’s southwest coast by suspected Somali pirates, NATO’s counter-piracy mission said.

Armed pirate gangs are making millions of dollars in ransoms and are able to stay out at sea for long periods using captured merchant vessels as mother ships. The shipping security crisis costs world trade billions of dollars each year.

Attacks as far away from Somalia as Monday’s hijacking are rare. Although NATO, EU and Iranian naval forces are trying to protect merchant shipping, the Indian Ocean is too big for them to effectively patrol all of it.

“It is very far east from Somalia,” a spokeswoman for the NATO Shipping Centre said.

The U.S. has identified the vessel as being operated by Iranian government shipping companies blacklisted by Washington.

Iran is expected to import 1.6 million tonnes of sugar in 2011-12, according to the International Sugar Organization.

SEOUL/DUBAI, March 5 (Reuters) – A Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC)-led consortium has secured South Korea’s first oil production assets in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Korean government said on Monday.

Korea has finalised a deal with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) to take a 40 percent stake in two onshore and one offshore oil drilling areas, as part of a wider push by oil import dependent Asian countries to secure upstream assets.

“We now have our own oil reserves in the Middle East,” South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said in a statement.

“Through this, stable crude supply to us are more guaranteed, and our energy security taken a big step forward.”

Under the deal, state-run Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC) will hold 34 percent and GS Energy will hold a 6 percent stake in the projects. ADNOC will own 60 percent.

The Korean consortium is expected to invest $2 billion of the estimated $5 billion total cost of developing the fields, the Korean government said in a statement.

The deal gives South Korea access to fields with combined reserves of at least 570 million barrels of oil, which Seoul has previously said it would have exclusive rights over if other oil supply sources were disrupted.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iranian firm AHT exports millions of dollars worth of nuts and dried fruit from Iran each month but Western financial sanctions mean it gets little money in return. Instead it is paid with other goods, such as cardboard boxes and metal cans from China.

“Most of our business right now is like this. No money is involved in the process,” Mohammad Amin, managing director of the pistachio and raisin exporter, told Reuters at an international food industry show in Dubai this month.

“We import the goods, sell the goods to the local market, get the money from the local market, and then pay my staff and my farmers.

“No money is circulating — it’s like thousands of years ago,” Amin said between negotiations with prospective buyers over bowls brimming with pistachios. Last year AHT’s exports totaled about $100 million, mostly to China and India.

Financial sanctions imposed over Iran’s disputed nuclear program have dealt a heavy blow to its foreign trade. Since late last year the United States has stepped up its use of anti-money laundering legislation to make it legally dangerous for banks that have any U.S. business to maintain ties with Iran.

As a result, Iranian firms have been frozen out of much of the global banking system which finances trade. It is difficult or impossible for them to obtain letters of credit or conduct international transfers of funds through banks.

But the cases of AHT and other Iranian companies contacted by Reuters suggests many are finding their way around the obstacles and continuing to do business, albeit at considerable inconvenience and cost.

DUBAI, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Iraq has allowed SK Innovation to bid in its fourth energy exploration block auction after the private South Korean company sold its stake in a Kurdish oilfield to Korea’s already barred state oil company KNOC, Baghdad said on Thursday.

Companies that have signed deals with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which is locked in a feud with the central government, have been blocked by Baghdad from taking part in an auction now planned for late May.

“The qualification of this company was delayed… due to its share in a Bazian production sharing contract with the Kurdistan Regional Government without the consent of the Federal Government,” the Petroleum Contracts and Licensing Directorate of Iraq’s oil ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Baghdad said SK Innovation could participate in the next auction of Iraqi oil and gas assets after transferring its share in the Bazian block in Kurdistan to Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC).

KNOC was barred after securing exploration rights from the Kurdish region for the oilfield in northern Iraq in 2007. U.S oil firm Hess Corp was excluded from bidding last September for the same reason.

Baghdad signed contracts with oil majors to develop its oilfields after two bidding rounds in 2009. An auction for gas fields was held in 2010.

Future auctions were expected to focus on the nation’s largely untapped gas resources but the next round has been repeatedly delayed and is currently expected to take place May 30-31.