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Kansas-Missouri heavy oil area draws new operator

Worthington Energy Inc. , San Francisco, said it will attempt to recover heavy oil on the Barr Cattle Co. lease near Chetopa in southeastern Kansas. A press release issued by Worthington provided no field details about the proposed project but said it will be conducted in collaboration with American Dynamic Resources Inc. (ADR). It was not clear when field work might start. Worthington signed a definitive agreement on Mar. 12 to acquire the oil and gas assets of ADR and heavy oil technology and intellectual property from ADR Pres. and Chief Executive Officer Charles Adams. As part of that acquisition, Worthington said it will utilize the Levia oil recovery process developed by ADR to begin recovering heavy oil in Kansas and Missouri. Worthington said ADR has integrated surfactant formulations for enhanced oil recovery developed by chemists with Oil-Chem Technologies LLC, Sugar Land, Tex. State geological organizations in Kansas, Missouri, […]

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Continental CEO: Bakken Oil Is Safe

WASHINGTON, March 26 (Reuters) – The biggest leaseholder in North Dakota’s booming oil fields said the crude shipped by rail to markets across the United States is safe, despite growing fears that crude from the Bakken formation is dangerously volatile. Regulators say that North Dakota crude should be treated more carefully after a number of trains carrying Bakken crude derailed and exploded over the past year. But Harold Hamm, the CEO of Continental Resources Inc, which is one of the pioneers in North Dakota drilling that ships crude by rail from North Dakota, said that as long as there are no accidents, the oil is not a threat. "Bakken oil is safe," Hamm told reporters when asked if there was anything the company should be doing to make Bakken oil safer. "Anytime you don’t keep trains on the track bad things happen," he said. "It’s like cars on the […]

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North Dakota Oilman Urges US Crude Exports To Europe

Ending the 40-year ban on U.S. crude exports is the fastest way the American drilling boom could bolster energy security in Europe and Ukraine, the CEO of the biggest operator in North Dakota’s vast oil fields told lawmakers on Wednesday. After Russia’s invasion of the Crimean region of Ukraine, several U.S. lawmakers have introduced bills pushing the government to speed approvals of U.S. liquefied natural gas exports. They say the extra U.S. supplies would provide Europe with an alternative to supplies from Russia, from which it currently gets nearly a third of its fuel. "While opening LNG exports is a noble goal and one that we as a country are actively working towards, the fact is the infrastructure to undertake large scale overnight LNG exports does not currently exist," Harold Hamm, the chairman and CEO of Continental Resources Inc said at a hearing of […]

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Canada Approves 4 LNG Export Licenses on Pacific Coast

By Judy McKinnon The Canadian government said Wednesday it has approved four, long-term licenses to export liquefied natural gas from proposed projects on the country’s west coast. The licenses, which had received approval from Canada’s National Energy Board in December, are for LNG exports from proposed Pacific Coast terminals backed by Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), BG Group PLC (BG.LN) and Malaysian state-owned energy giant Petroliam Nasional Bhd (PET.YY), or Petronas. None of the proposed projects have been built or even formally approved by their sponsors. The government said in a statement that the licenses will allow for the export of up to 73.38 million metric tons of LNG a year. Western Canada is aiming to become a major global supplier of LNG by matching rising demand in Asia with abundant supplies of gas in North America. Specifically, Canada said it has approved export licenses for the proposed Pacific NorthWest […]

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Canadian oil exports down marginally for January

Canada exported about 2 percent fewer barrels of oil per day in January than it did at the same time last year, the National Energy Board reported. NEB published data on total crude oil exports for January, the last full month for which export data are available. Overall, it said Canada exported around 2.7 million barrels per day for January 2014, about 2.3 percent less than the same time last year. The bulk of Canadian oil deposits are in Alberta province in the form of the heavier grade of oil sands, or bitumen. In January 2014, Canada exported 1.8 million barrels of oil sands per day, about 1 percent more year-on-year, NEB reported Tuesday. NEB didn’t break down exports by destination in its Tuesday data set. Nearly all of Canada’s oil exports are designated for the U.S. market, though Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has tried to woo Asian […]

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London awards grants for low-carbon heating schemes

The British government said Wednesday two dozen communities received more than $3 million in grants to develop heating networks using low-carbon technology. British Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker said using energy from waste, or what he described as recovered heat from the industrial sector, would help advance a low-carbon economy. "Heat networks are a defining part of our smarter, cleaner energy future," he added in a statement Wednesday. Grants for 24 local communities are valued at a combined $3.4 million. More than 50 local communities since January 2014 have received similar developmental grants ranging in value from $24,000 to $410,000 each. As part of a broader European agreement, the British government is committed to using renewable energy to meet 20 percent of its demand by 2020. © 2014 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly […]

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Ukraine Crisis Spurs Calls for Europe to Rethink Shale

The crisis in Ukraine has intensified calls from industry and political leaders—including senior U.S. officials—for Europe to develop its own shale industry. Proponents hope doing so will help wean the Continent off gas imported from Russia, which currently exports around 30% of the region’s gas needs, and shield Europe’s energy supply from geopolitical disputes with its Eastern neighbor. President Barack Obama , speaking at a news conference in Brussels on Wednesday, also urged European leaders to find ways to become less dependent on Russian energy and consider its own energy sources in the wake of the crisis. "This entire event, I think, has pointed to the need for Europe to look at how it can further diversify its energy sources," he said. With 470 trillion cubic feet of potentially recoverable shale-gas reserves, Europe has around 80% of the resource available in the U.S., according to U.S. Energy Information Administration […]

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The outlook for Russian oil output in a post-Crimea world

Could economic sanctions finally halt Russia’s crude production growth? In June last year, I wrote a blog post for The Barrel making much of the fact that Russia is the world’s biggest oil producer and has been for quite a while. Its output has consistently ranked above that of Saudi Arabia in the past few years and production has continued to rise in recent months, averaging some 10.53 million b/d in February this year. There is no sign of output starting a material decline — like those seen in a number of the world’s more mature producing regions such as the UK, Norway and Denmark — and Russia keeps finding new ways to pump more oil whether it be through improved technology or tapping new, under-explored regions like East Siberia. So while the geology and the technology keep on bringing in the barrels, what factors are there that could […]

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World crude production 2013 without shale oil is back to 2005 levels

Unnoticed by the mainstream media, US shale oil covers up a recent decline of crude oil production of 1.5 mb/d  in the rest of world (using data up to Oct 2013). This means that without US shale oil the world would be in a deep oil crisis similar to the decline phase 2006/07  when oil prices went up. The decline comes from many countries but is also caused by fights over oil and oil-related issues in Iran, Libya and other countries which can be seen on TV every day. Fig 1: World’s incremental crude oil production Oct 2013 Incremental production for each country is calculated as the difference between total production and the minimum production between Jan 2001 and Oct 2013. The sum of minima is the base production. Countries which had substantial changes in production appear as large areas in the graph. Russia supplied – quite reliably – […]

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Export Stupidity

Congress is holding hearings this week on the possible lifting of a US oil export ban instituted in the 1970s to promote national energy self-sufficiency and has invited a  number of “experts” with dubious ties to the oil and gas industry  to explain to them why it’s such a good idea. Following Russia’s near-annexation of Crimea, American politicians are intent on undercutting Russian president Vladimir Putin’s greatest geopolitical asset—his country’s oil and natural gas exports. If the US could supply Europe with large amounts of fuel, that would reduce the Continent’s dependency on Russia while depriving Putin of needed revenues. Lawmakers from both parties are also using the hearings to urge the Obama administration to speed up natural gas exports as a hedge against the threat of a conceivable Russian cutoff of gas supplies to Ukraine and other countries. Four […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple