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Russia expects major eastern oil investments

Major investments in oil operations in the eastern part of Russia will boost export potential by 2035, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said Monday. Dkorkovich said investments in the oil industry in eastern Russia are expected to grow by more than $1 trillion. "Oil production and supplies will grow in the eastern region of the country," he said . "The part of the eastern direction in the total exports of oil and petroleum products will increase from 12 percent to 23 percent." Russia is one of the world’s leading oil producers, producing more than 10 million barrels of oil per day on average. Most of the country’s oil fields are in the western region of Siberia. The head of a Russian joint venture between Shell and Gazprom Neft signed an agreement in January to use hydraulic fracturing to tap into an oil formation in Siberia. When combined with gas […]

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Looking past the death of Peak Oil

Production has not peaked, but prices could be volatile Peak Oil is dead. The news that US output of liquid petroleum has regained its previous peak , reached in 1970, is enough to read the last rites over the idea that a region’s oil production will follow a shape like a bell curve, rising to a peak and then inexorably falling away. Much of the theorising about Peak Oil failed to anticipate technological progress, or understand the power of economic incentives. The US boom in production from previously uncommercial shale reserves has been made possible by advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and made a reality by oil prices that 15 years ago barely seemed possible. More On this topic Editorial Yet while the strong form of the Peakists’ argument can be consigned to the dustbin of history, they were not entirely wrong. Producing oil has become harder, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil Up On Iraq Unrest, Seasonal Demand

Crude-oil futures continued to rally in Asian trading hours Monday after last week’s surge on escalating Iraqi violence. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in July traded at $107.45 a barrel at 0513 GMT, up $0.54 in the Globex electronic session. August Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose $0.62 to $113.08 a barrel. Nymex crude for July delivery gained over 4% last week, its largest weekly gain since the week ended Dec. 6, while Brent crude gained 4.4% last week, snapping a two-week losing streak on Iraqi violence. Over the weekend, radical Sunni militia advancing through Iraq bragged about the execution of hundreds of Shiite Iraqi soldiers. Oil markets are concerned that oil fields in Kuwait, another key oil producer in the region, could also be at risk as it borders Iraq. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is expected to open talks […]

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WTI Crude Advances a Fourth Day on Iraq Unrest; Brent Increases

West Texas Intermediate climbed for a fourth day and Brent crude gained on concern that escalating violence in Iraq threatens to disrupt supplies from OPEC’s second-largest producer. WTI futures advanced as much as 0.6 percent in New York after capping a 4.1 percent weekly gain on June 13. Iraq’s military struck the positions of insurgents who have captured territory north of Baghdad , trying to turn back battlefield advances that threaten to split the country. Brent may quickly rally to a range of $120 to $125 a barrel if production is affected, Societe Generale SA said. The country produced 3.3 million barrels a day last month, data from Bloomberg show. “The real concern is a disruption to production and exports in southern Iraq,” Mike Wittner , head of oil market research at Societe Generale SA in New York, said in a report today. “The threat of that happening is […]

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Oil Topping $116 Seen Possible as Iraq Conflict Widens

Brent crude was projected by Wall Street analysts to average as much as $116 a barrel by the end of the year. Now, with violence escalating in Iraq , how far the price will rise has become anyone’s guess. The international benchmark surged above $114 on June 13 for the first time in nine months as militants routed the Iraqi army in the north and advanced toward Baghdad , threatening to ignite a civil war. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, known as ISIL, has halted repairs to the pipeline from the Kirkuk oil field to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in Turkey . The conflict threatens output in OPEC’s second-biggest crude producer. The Persian Gulf country is forecast to provide 60 percent of the group’s growth for the rest of this decade, the International Energy Agency said June 13. Global consumption will “increase sharply” in the […]

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BP: U.S. Beats China's Oil Demand Growth in 2013

Oil demand in the United States grew at the fastest pace in the world in 2013, outstripping China for the first time since 1999 as the world’s top economy reaped the benefit of the shale boom, oil major BP said on Monday. BP also said the United States recorded its largest-ever annual rise in production for a second year in a row at 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd). In its annual review of energy statistics, first published in 1951 and considered an industry benchmark, BP said U.S. oil consumption in 2013 grew by 400,000 bpd, the sharpest increase in the world, followed by China’s rise of 390,000 bpd, BP said. The consumption growth was led by an expansion of the U.S. industrial sector as the world’s top economy emerged from the 2008 financial crisis, BP Chief Economist Christof Ruhl said. At the same […]

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BP: U.S. Beats China’s Oil Demand Growth in 2013

Oil demand in the United States grew at the fastest pace in the world in 2013, outstripping China for the first time since 1999 as the world’s top economy reaped the benefit of the shale boom, oil major BP said on Monday. BP also said the United States recorded its largest-ever annual rise in production for a second year in a row at 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd). In its annual review of energy statistics, first published in 1951 and considered an industry benchmark, BP said U.S. oil consumption in 2013 grew by 400,000 bpd, the sharpest increase in the world, followed by China’s rise of 390,000 bpd, BP said. The consumption growth was led by an expansion of the U.S. industrial sector as the world’s top economy emerged from the 2008 financial crisis, BP Chief Economist Christof Ruhl said. At the same […]

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BP says oil price at its most stable since early 1970s

Despite jitters over Iraq , the price of oil is at its most stable since the early 1970s, as a huge increase in US oil production offsets massive disruptions to supply from places such as Libya, according to BP. Christof Rühl, group chief economist, said the world had seen a cumulative 3m barrels a day of supply disruption since the start of the 2011 Arab uprising but that had been “cancelled out” by a similar extra amount of US production. More On this topic IN Commodities “There has been an almost perfect match between outages in north Africa and elsewhere and US production growth,” he said. The equilibrium had created an “eerie quiet” in global oil markets. “It’s sheer coincidence – they have nothing to do with each other so won’t last forever,” he added. Mr Rühl […]

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Global Oil Consumption Outpaces Production

Global oil consumption last year grew faster than oil production, BP PLC said in its annual snapshot of world energy statistics. The BP Statistical Review of Energy, unveiled Monday morning at a Moscow conference, found that world-wide, oil consumption grew 1.4%, or 1.4 million barrels a day, which is slightly above the historical average. But oil production grew by just .6%, or 560,000 barrels a day. The imbalance points to several big trends in the industry in recent years. The shale boom has boosted production in the U.S., BP said, largely offsetting disruptions elsewhere in the world. As a result, said Christof Rühl, BP’s chief economist, […]

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Iraq insurgent advance spreads to northwest

The insurgent offensive that has threatened to dismember Iraq spread to the northwest of the country on Sunday, when Sunni militants launched a dawn raid on a town close to the Syrian border, clashing with police and government forces. As the rapid advance south by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) towards Baghdad appeared to slow over the weekend, fierce fighting erupted in the town of Tal Afar 60 km (40 miles) west of Mosul near the Syrian border, security sources and a local official said. ISIL fighters and other Sunni Muslim armed groups have stormed several towns on the road to Baghdad after seizing Mosul nearly a week ago – an offensive which only stalled as it approached the mainly Shi’ite capital. The advance alarmed both Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite supporters in Iran and officials in the United States, which helped […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple