Category:

EIA: U.S. September Lower 48 Gas Output -0.8% Vs Record August Level

– U.S. natural gas out in the Lower 48 states dropped 0.8% in September from an August level that was revised downward, but remained at a record high, government data released Friday show. The Energy Information Administration data show September output of 73.91 billion cubic feet a day was up 1.7% from a year earlier. The EIA said September gas output declined from a month earlier due to maintenance work on facilities and “normal well decline” in Louisiana, and the shutdown for most of the month of a gas processing plant in Wyoming. The month-to-month decline was the first since March. August gas output was revised down by 0.4% from a month earlier, to 74.49 billion cubic feet. The EIA said output from Louisiana […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

ConocoPhillips to Spend $16.7 Billion on Capital Projects in 2014

ConocoPhillips said it plans to spend $16.7 billion on capital projects in 2014, with the bulk of it directed toward continuing oil and gas production in North America. The budget is about $900 million higher than the plan for 2013 the company announced last December. About 55% of spending for next year will be for North American operations, while the remaining 45% will be allocated to Europe, the Asia Pacific and other international businesses. Last year’s budget included a 60% allocation for North America and 40% for the international businesses. About 39% of the budget will be directed to development-drilling programs. Most of that portion will be spent in U.S. plays such as the Eagle Ford and the Permian Basin in Texas, and the Bakken in North Dakota, among others. Exploration and appraisal takes up about 13% of the budget, including drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and appraising […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

API official: 'Gold mine' awaits energy explorers in Atlantic Ocean

Oil and natural gas development in the Atlantic Ocean could create hundreds of thousands of jobs, said Erik Milito of the American Petroleum Institute . “Oil and natural gas production off our Atlantic coast is a potential gold mine,” Milito, the API’s director of upstream operations, said in a statement Thursday. “Developing oil and natural gas in the Atlantic could put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work, make us more energy secure, and bring in needed revenue for the government.” A 125-page report prepared for API, an industry trade group, by Quest Offshore Resources Inc. says oil and gas exploration on the U.S. Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf could generate $51 billion in new revenue for the federal government. The oil and gas potential in the region, the report said, is more than half of what energy companies are now producing from the Gulf […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

API official: ‘Gold mine’ awaits energy explorers in Atlantic Ocean

Oil and natural gas development in the Atlantic Ocean could create hundreds of thousands of jobs, said Erik Milito of the American Petroleum Institute . “Oil and natural gas production off our Atlantic coast is a potential gold mine,” Milito, the API’s director of upstream operations, said in a statement Thursday. “Developing oil and natural gas in the Atlantic could put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work, make us more energy secure, and bring in needed revenue for the government.” A 125-page report prepared for API, an industry trade group, by Quest Offshore Resources Inc. says oil and gas exploration on the U.S. Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf could generate $51 billion in new revenue for the federal government. The oil and gas potential in the region, the report said, is more than half of what energy companies are now producing from the Gulf […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Shell scraps Gulf Coast gas-to-liquids project

Shell is scrapping its proposed massive gas-to-liquids project on the U.S. Gulf Coast, the company said. The Shell facility, to be located along the Mississippi River in Ascension Parish, La., was to produce 140,000 barrels a day of oil products from low-cost shale gas. “Despite the ample supplies of natural gas in the area, the company has taken the decision that GTL is not a viable option for Shell in North America, at this time, due to the likely development cost of such a project, uncertainties on long-term oil and gas prices and differentials, and Shell’s strict capital discipline,” the company said Thursday in a statement. When Shell and the state of Louisiana announced the location for the proposed facility in September, Shell estimated it would spend $12.5 billion. The state had offered an incentive package for the project that included a […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

U.S. rail petroleum delivery up 20 percent for week ending Nov. 30

U.S. rail delivery of crude oil was up 20 percent last week from the previous week, the American Association of Railroads said. The AAR said Thursday 9,691 carloads of crude oil, or about 6.7 million barrels of oil, were delivered on the rail system last week. So far this year, 655,619 carloads, or about 458 million barrels of oil, were delivered by rail, a 32.4 percent increase from the same period last year, the trade group said. The AAR said its total for U.S. operations excludes deliveries from Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Railway. The Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the U.S. Energy Department, said domestic oil production averaged 7.7 million barrels in October, the last full month for which statistics are available. An accelerating pace of oil production in the United States has placed a burden on pipeline capacity, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

TransCanada Sets January Start for Pipeline

TransCanada Corp. said it expects to start crude shipments in mid- to late January on its Gulf Coast oil pipeline, which will take oil from the pricing and storage hub in Cushing, Okla., to refiners in Texas. The line, also known as Marketlink, is the southern leg of the controversial Keystone XL project that would take hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude from Canadian and U.S. oil fields, such as the Bakken in North Dakota, to the Gulf Coast. The […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Canadian forecast assumes heavy oil will be transported

Canadian government analysts identified transportation as a major export uncertainty in the National Energy Board’s latest long-term supply and demand projections, but expect market forces to resolve the question, particularly for heavy oil , one of them told a Washington audience. “We don’t make specific assumptions about how it will be transported, although we see it moving by rail now to pipeline terminals,” said Abra Bhargava, who leads the Energy Integration Team at NEB’s Calgary headquarters, during a Dec. 6 presentation on the forecast at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The analysts expect to take a closer look at long-distance rail transportation of diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands in future forecasts, she said, adding, “We strongly believe the markets can function, and transportation will be found.” That assessment differs significantly from many US environmental organizations’ declarations that crude oil production from Alberta’s oil sands won’t grow […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Oil industry R&D deactivates ‘peak’

Many energy observers believe that the global Petroleum Engineering Industry had successfully managed deactivating the famous Peak Oil theory through developing new advanced technologies that resulted in significant additional reserves as a result of the exponential increase in the Research and Development (R&D) investment in the last decade as compared to the last century. The Peak Oil theory attracted media headlines at the beginning of this century through the book “Twilight in the Desert: Shock Saudi Oil and the Global Economy”  written by the famous banker Matthew Simon, who died few years ago. The exponential increase in the R&D investment by national, international and service oil companies generated several new advanced technologies that helped the oil industry discover more oil and gas fields and increase the recovery factor from existing and new discovered fields to reach a level that was never thought of in the past. Indeed, it was […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
Category:

Oil industry R&D deactivates ‘peak’

Many energy observers believe that the global Petroleum Engineering Industry had successfully managed deactivating the famous Peak Oil theory through developing new advanced technologies that resulted in significant additional reserves as a result of the exponential increase in the Research and Development (R&D) investment in the last decade as compared to the last century. The Peak Oil theory attracted media headlines at the beginning of this century through the book “Twilight in the Desert: Shock Saudi Oil and the Global Economy”  written by the famous banker Matthew Simon, who died few years ago. The exponential increase in the R&D investment by national, international and service oil companies generated several new advanced technologies that helped the oil industry discover more oil and gas fields and increase the recovery factor from existing and new discovered fields to reach a level that was never thought of in the past. Indeed, it was […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA