Brent, WTI Fall as Coronavirus Spreads
Brent fell by 10% on Monday, and U.S. crude to below $30, as emergency rate cuts by the U.S. Federal Reserve and its global counterparts failed to tame markets and China's factory output plunged at the sharpest pace in 30 years amid the spread of coronavirus.Brent crude was down $3.58, or 10.6%, to $30.27 a barrel by 1231 GMT. The front-month price had risen $1 earlier in the session.U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was at $29.24, down $2.49 or 7.8%.To combat the economic fallout of the pandemic…
Oilfield Services Giants Start Year with Asset Sales
Schlumberger, Halliburton Co, and Baker Hughes Co have kicked off the new year by putting units up for sale, as the three largest names in oilfield services seek to reshape their businesses and adjust to falling demand.Oilfield service providers are facing reduced spending by oil and gas producers as investors push for higher shareholder returns rather than more drilling activity. Competition also is forcing service companies to exit less profitable businesses.
Beach Energy to Boost Drilling Spend
Beach Energy, Australia's third-largest independent oil and gas producer, ended the 2019 financial year more cashed up than expected and plans to step up spending on drilling while keeping an eye out for acquisitions, its boss said on Wednesday.Beach paid off debt on its A$1.6 billion ($1.1 billion) acquisition of Lattice Energy within just 18 months, two years earlier than originally planned, with the help of an asset sale and strong cash flow from its expanded portfolio.The company ended the year to June 30 with net cash of A$172 million…
HHLA Support Energy Transition
German logistics and transportation company Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA) and its partners began research and development work on the publicly funded FRESH project at its Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA).FRESH stands for flexibility management and control reserve provision of heavy goods vehicles in the harbour, said the firm which operates three container terminals at the Port of Hamburg: Altenwerder, Burchardkai and Tollerort, as well as cargo handling and transport services by rail…
Saudi Aramco, ADNOC to Cooperate on LNG
The state-owned energy giants of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), signed a cooperation deal to explore potential areas for mutual collaboration in the LNG value chain aimed at bolstering gas production and revenue.The Saudi Arabian national petroleum and natural gas company based in Dhahran said in a press release that it has signed a framework agreement with ADNOC to explore opportunities for…
U.S. Energy Secretary to Russia: Joint Work Could Help Market Stability
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Thursday he had told his Russian counterpart Alexander Novak in talks in Moscow that Washington and Moscow could work together as leading energy producers to ensure global market stability.Perry said he told Novak that both the United States and Russia were interested in the market remaining competitive and that their interests overlapped in the energy sphere.Reporting by Katya Golubkova Writing by Tom Balmforth
A Promising Future for U.S. Shale
Natural gas production from U.S. shale fields can keep growing for decades, giving Washington a powerful diplomatic tool to counter the geopolitical influence of other energy exporters such as Russia, according to industry executives and government officials. The United States can expand shale gas output another 60 percent in the coming decades, according to at least one estimate. So far, liquefied natural gas (LNG) has been spared from retaliatory tariffs in U.S. President Donald Trump's intensifying trade conflicts with China and other countries.
Endeavour Energy Kicks Off North Sea Assets Sale
Endeavour Energy UK has launched the sale of its North Sea oil and gas assets at an ambitious price target of $500 million, according to two industry sources and a document seen by Reuters. The sale is part of group asset sales after Endeavour's U.S. parent company filed for bankruptcy in 2014. The UK company and its administrators have hired audit firm Deloitte as their corporate finance advisor on the sale, dubbed "Project Arrow", the document showed. Information documents for the portfolio…
U.S. Bill Expands Carbon Tax Credit
A little-noticed addition to the U.S. budget deal approved last week will help Occidental Petroleum Corp and other oil producers by more than tripling a tax credit for injecting carbon dioxide back into the earth to increase crude output. The tax-credit expansion, although supported by environmentalists and energy producers, had failed to move out of Congress during the 2016 presidential election. Its passage now likely will further boost already surging U.S. oil output in a year that production is forecast to hit 11 million barrels per day.
Dutch Plan to Build Giant Offshore Solar Power Farm
An offshore seaweed farm in the North Sea will be turned into a large solar power farm that aims to pipe energy to the Dutch mainland in roughly three years. The project comes at a critical time for the Netherlands, which is struggling to curb fossil fuel use and meet greenhouse gas emission targets after years of underinvestment in renewable energy sources. After an initial pilot next year, a consortium comprising energy producers, scientists and researchers plans to ultimately operate 2…
Expanded US Sanctions May Affect Russia's Foreign O&G Expansion
Newly updated sanctions introduced by the United States against Moscow for its role in the Ukraine crisis may put a brake on Russia's future efforts to increase its exposure to the global oil and gas industry, analysts said on Wednesday. However, the punitive measures will have little immediate effect on the operations of Russian energy companies abroad, they said. The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control on Tuesday published an amendment to sanctions against exploration or production for deepwater…
Perry: Obama Discriminated Against Coal, Nuclear Energy
The United States discriminated against the nuclear and coal industries under the administration of former President Barack Obama, U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said on Wednesday. "Nuclear and coal ... Those two industries were discriminated against over the course of the last administration," Perry told reporters at an oil conference in Cape Town, when asked about a U.S. government directive to support ageing coal and nuclear plants. The directive would…
Plan to Support Coal, Nuclear Divides U.S. Energy Industry
U.S. industries that rarely agree - gas drillers and renewable energy producers - urged a federal agency on Monday to dump a government directive to prop up ageing nuclear and coal plants, saying the electricity grid was already reliable. The split in the energy industry showed that a Trump administration push to make the country energy "dominant" by boosting output from every part of the sector may face hurdles. A group of 20 organizations including the Independent…
Op/Ed: ASTRO Act Shoots For the Stars
National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA) president Randall Luthi weighs in after the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on offshore development and introduced the Accessing Strategy Resources Offshore (ASTRO) Act. Today’s hearing was a slam dunk by the House Natural Resources Committee. Not only did the Committee bring in experts and stakeholders with their own unique offshore perspectives to the hearing, the Committee took a bold step in introducing the forward thinking ASTRO Act.
Producers Gain Breathing Room to Borrow Amid Oil's Uptick
U.S. oil and gas producers have gained more flexibility to borrow money as crude prices have modestly rebounded, according to a survey of the companies, lenders and others released on Friday. Greater room to borrow means energy producers are under less immediate pressure to cut costs or output. Only 26 percent of energy producers with loans are likely to see a decrease this fall in their borrowing bases, according to the survey by Dallas-based law firm Haynes and Boone.
U.S. GoM Energy Producers Evacuating Ahead of T/S Nate
Oil and natural gas producers began evacuating staff at U.S. Gulf of Mexico platforms on Thursday ahead of Tropical Storm Nate, the second storm in as many months to threaten Gulf Coast oil and refining facilities. Nate, which has already killed three people in Costa Rica, according to local authorities, is forecast to scrape past Honduras and Mexico, enter the Gulf and strengthen into a hurricane before making landfall early on Sunday in Louisiana, near several major refineries.
Dirty Water in U.S. Shale Patch Drives Investment in Water Handlers
Huge volumes of dirty water produced by U.S. shale firms are driving up investment in water-handling specialists, as cash-conscious oil and gas companies try to trim costs. For every barrel of crude, drillers generate up to six barrels of brackish water containing chemicals used to release oil and gas from shale rock. The water is trucked or piped to disposal wells, or recycled. Transporting and disposing of water is costly for energy producers who are cash-strapped after more than two years of slumping oil prices…
Perry's Proposed Grid Rule Scrambles Energy Alliances
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry's attempt to save the coal and nuclear industries by proposing a new grid resiliency rule is making for some odd bedfellows across the energy sector. The proposed grid resiliency rule threatens to turn two of the Trump administration's most loyal groups of supporters against one another, as the gas and coal industries square off for a fight over market share. The White House has celebrated the growth in domestic gas production and associated reduction in greenhouse emissions but also wants to rescue coal and nuclear producers.
Who is Responsible for WTI Weakness?
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is distorting oil prices by being far too optimistic in its forecasts for U.S. production, according to Harold Hamm, the chief executive of Continental Resources. Hamm, who also chairs the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance (DEPA), a lobbying group, blames EIA for both the outright decline in U.S. oil prices and their underperformance compared with Brent since June. Hamm faults EIA for being too optimistic about U.S.
New Offshore Oil Investments Needed to Avoid Shortages -Hess
Higher investments in offshore oil production are critical to avoiding a supply squeeze by 2020, as expanding shale output will not match projected demand increases in the next few years, U.S. oil producer Hess Corp said on Thursday. The past four years of low oil prices have major producers pulling back on needed offshore investment, and the gap between supply and demand should help prices rebound, Hess Chief Operating Officer Greg Hill said at an energy conference at Rice University's Baker Institute.
