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More oil expected from Kazakhstan

The Kazakh Ministry of Energy outlined a strategic 2014 agenda to the nation’s president, a plan that calls for a slight increase in oil production. Kazakh Oil and Gas Minister Uzakbai Karabalin met President Nursultan Nazarbayev to discuss plans for the current year, the president’s official website said Monday. The EIA, the U.S. Energy Department’s statistical arm, said Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic, is estimated to hold 30 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. Its Kashagan field, the fifth largest in the world in terms of volume, holds an estimated 13 billion barrels of oil. The Kazakh government said it expects to see a modest increase in oil production in 2014 to 608 million barrels of oil, compared to the 600 million barrels produced last year, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported. The press agency didn’t say which reserve areas would be […]

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Shell to further scale down Australian operations?

Shell’s Australian investments are in the spotlight after the company offloaded its holdings in a major gas project in Western Australia. Shell announced Monday it is selling an 8 percent stake in the Wheatstone-Iago joint venture gas fields, and also a 6.4 percent holding in the Wheatstone gas project to Kuwait’s Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co. for $1.3 billion. "Shell will remain a major player in Australia’s energy industry. However, we are refocusing our investment to where we can add the most value with Shell’s capital and technology," said Shell Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden, in a statement announcing the Wheatstone sale. "We are making hard choices in our worldwide portfolio to improve Shell’s capital efficiency." The move follows Shell’s announcement of earnings Friday for the quarter that ended Dec. 31 of $2.9 billion, almost $1 billion less than market expectations. Other Shell assets […]

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China Seen Retaking Lead From U.S. in Oil Demand Growth

China will retake the lead over the U.S. in oil demand growth this year as its manufacturing and transportation industries expand, the International Energy Agency said. Chinese use is forecast to expand 3.6 percent, or 369,000 barrels a day, to 10.49 million barrels a day this year, the Paris-based energy adviser said in its monthly oil market report today. U.S. consumption will rise 0.4 percent, or 72,000 barrels a day, a slower pace than last year when its barrel-a-day expansion exceeded that of China. Soaring shale output in the U.S. is helping the world’s largest oil consumer achieve its highest level of energy independence in two decades. The U.S. will surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s top producer by 2015 and be close to self-sufficiency in the next two decades, while China will become the world’s largest oil consumer by 2035, replacing the U.S., the agency predicted […]

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New Suppliers Boost China Oil Imports

China is trimming dependence from some top oil suppliers, such as Saudi Arabia, as greater availability of global oil helps Beijing diversify its sources of foreign crude. The changing makeup of China’s foreign oil suppliers is one example of how weaker demand from buyers in the U.S., Europe and Japan is reshaping global trade flows. Beijing hopes the gradual shift in oil shipments can help it reduce dependence on a key group of suppliers—though new shipments in many cases are coming from politically risky areas. Chinese customs data released Tuesday showed China’s crude imports declined or stagnated from some of its largest oil suppliers in 2013, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Venezuela. Meanwhile, China has increasingly tapped supplies in Iraq, parts of western Africa and elsewhere. Imports from Saudi Arabia, China’s largest overseas supplier, were flat in 2013 from a year earlier, the first time in at least a […]

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China Focus: Air pollution chokes as smog migrates

People living in south China have been grumbling about gales blowing smog in from the north, as hazardous air chokes more parts of the country this winter. In 2013, China’s smog belt stretched from the developed regions of the Yangtze and Zhujiang river deltas and areas around Beijing and Tianjin, to other places where smog was seldom seen. The southernmost province of Hainan and autonomous region of Tibet recorded smoggy days. Chinese Academy of Sciences issued a report last month about climate change, saying that besides local pollutants, "smog migration" was another serious problem. In Beijing, 30 percent to 40 percent of the PM 2.5, airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, was caused by emissions, 20 percent to 30 percent from chemical conversion in the atmosphere, and the rest from smog movement, according to the report. Meanwhile, according to statistics published monthly […]

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New leak found in Fukushima plant’s wrecked No. 3 building

A new water leak, possibly from the effort to cool a crippled reactor, has been detected on the first floor of a reactor building at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Jan. 18. TEPCO said workers discovered by a video feed that water was leaking on the first floor of the wrecked No. 3 reactor building earlier in the day. The utility added that the water was flowing into the basement of the reactor building and not outside the structure. It is investigating the source of the leak. TEPCO suggested the possibilities that the water was leaking from a pipe that is sending cooling water to the reactor or from the reactor containment vessel. If the leak is from water being used to cool the reactor, it would be highly contaminated and a new headache for TEPCO […]

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South Korea's Dec crude imports from Iran slump 29% on year

South Korea’s imports of Iranian crude oil in December slumped 29.4% to 4.036 million barrels, or 130,194 b/d, compared with 5.724 million barrels a year earlier, data released Wednesday by state-run Korea National Oil Corp showed. But the December volume was up 4.7% from imports of 3.853 million barrels in November, the data showed. For the whole of 2013, South Korea imported 48.21 million barrels of Iranian crude, down 14.1% from the 56.15 million barrels it purchased in the previous year. The US said Monday it had taken the necessary steps to pause efforts to further reduce Iranian crude oil exports by allowing the six current customers of Iranian oil to maintain their purchases at current levels for the duration of the Geneva agreement between Iran and world powers that came into effect Monday. Article continues below… Request a free trial of: Oilgram News […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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South Korea’s Dec crude imports from Iran slump 29% on year

South Korea’s imports of Iranian crude oil in December slumped 29.4% to 4.036 million barrels, or 130,194 b/d, compared with 5.724 million barrels a year earlier, data released Wednesday by state-run Korea National Oil Corp showed. But the December volume was up 4.7% from imports of 3.853 million barrels in November, the data showed. For the whole of 2013, South Korea imported 48.21 million barrels of Iranian crude, down 14.1% from the 56.15 million barrels it purchased in the previous year. The US said Monday it had taken the necessary steps to pause efforts to further reduce Iranian crude oil exports by allowing the six current customers of Iranian oil to maintain their purchases at current levels for the duration of the Geneva agreement between Iran and world powers that came into effect Monday. Article continues below… Request a free trial of: Oilgram News […]

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India to review oil and gas estimates

The Indian government announced plans to review more than a dozen basins across the country to update its estimated oil and natural gas potential. M. Veerappa Moily, India’s energy minister, set up a multilateral team to reassess the nation’s reserve potential. The Hindu, an Indian newspaper, reported the team will spend the next 30 months evaluating the reserve potential in 26 basins across India. The survey covers an estimated 1.2 million square miles of Indian territory. The newspaper reported Monday the last such exercise was carried out 20 years ago for 15 reserve areas. The Indian government is looking to secure more oil and gas reserves to help support its expanding economy. In early January, state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd. said it expects to produce as much as 353 million cubic feet of natural gas from offshore reserves by 2018. The […]

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Americans Driving Down Their Driving Miles

Americans Driving Down Their Driving Miles We may be witnessing a historic change in our driving habits. Americans love their cars and love to drive their cars. With each American traveling on average less than 10,000 miles a year  and the country as a whole nearly  three trillion total vehicle miles traveled per year  (VMT), we are hands down the champs at racking up the miles . But of late, something remarkable and, for many, unexpected has been happening. It’s not so much that our automobile love affair has ended, rather that maybe, just maybe, it’s not quite as hot and heavy as it has been. (See related story: “ U.S. Teenagers Are Driving Much Less: Four Theories About Why .”) Driving Habits Switching Directions And what is the evidence for this cooling of the passion between American drivers and their wheels? Exhibit A is the graphic below showing U.S. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple