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Oil Steady Ahead NATO Summit Outcome, U.S. Jobs Data

By Eric Yep Crude-oil futures were steady in Asian trade Friday as markets wait for the outcome of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Europe and ahead of U.S. jobs data. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in October traded at $94.47 a barrel at 0419 GMT, up $0.02 in the Globex electronic session. October Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell $0.05 to $101.78 a barrel. World leaders at the NATO summit in Wales are still working on a new set of sanctions against Moscow for supporting pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine and allegedly sending thousands of troops there. NATO members are also evaluating the situation in Iraq and said they would help form a military coalition to confront the rising threat from Islamic State militants. "Markets hinge on the results of the NATO summit talks which should end today," Howie […]

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WTI Heads for Weekly Drop as Refiners Slow Rates; Brent Steady

West Texas Intermediate headed for a weekly decline as U.S. refineries reduced operating rates at the end of the peak season for gasoline demand in the world’s biggest oil consumer. Brent was steady in London . Futures were little changed in New York and poised for a 1.6 percent weekly drop. Refineries operated at 93.3 percent of their capacity last week, down 0.2 percentage points, according to the Energy Information Administration. Processing plants schedule maintenance during September and October as a transition to making winter-grade fuels. Libyan crude output was steady at 725,000 barrels a day, National Oil Corp. said. “Lower demand is certainly the base case scenario, but it’s unlikely the sellers will get too aggressive,” Michael McCarthy , a chief strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney, said by phone. “Firstly, we start to move into the hurricane season in the U.S., and secondly, peak demand for oil […]

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Natural-Gas Prices Fall on Larger-Than-Expected Surplus

By Timothy Puko Natural-gas futures closed lower Thursday for the third straight session after a weekly stockpile report showed a larger-than-expected surplus. The front-month October contract settled down 2.8 cents, or 0.7%, to $3.819 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices have fallen 6% this week, undoing nearly all of a two-week rally that had seen natural gas peak above $4/mmBtu on Friday. Producers added 79 billion cubic feet of gas to storage for the week ended Aug. 29, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said. The addition was 6 bcf larger than the 73-bcf consensus average expectations of analysts and brokers surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. Traders use the EIA update to gauge how quickly stockpiles are recovering from high demand that drained them to 11-year lows this winter. Last week’s addition refilled stockpiles to 2.7 trillion cubic feet, within 16% of the […]

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UK edges closer to military operations against Isis

An RAF Tornado GR4 takes off Four British Tornados are already on an intelligence-gathering mission over Iraq The UK is moving closer to scaling up its operations against jihadis in Iraq after meetings with world leaders in Wales at the Nato summit and efforts in Westminster to begin canvassing support for a more full-blooded intervention. British military chiefs have yet to be given any directions on operations in the Middle East but one senior officer said they understood a nod from Number 10 could be imminent. Any operation would be limited in scale, they stressed, and would be likely to take the form of something such as a small, non-combat deployment to Baghdad to train and assist the Iraqi army from behind the front lines or airstrikes alongside the US. A government source played down the notion of any military engagement soon. The UK was “in a place where […]

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NATO to help coordinate security assistance for Iraq

NEWPORT Wales (Reuters) – NATO leaders are set to agree at a summit on Friday to help organize security assistance for Iraq in its fight against Islamic State militants, including coordinating the airlift of supplies, a Western official said. NATO is expected to set up a clearing house that would match offers of military supplies to help the Iraqi authorities with available transport aircraft, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. NATO would not take part in any combat operations, and the security assistance would be provided by individual member states and partners, he said. (Reporting by Adrian Croft ; Editing by Paul Taylor)

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Baghdad to file new claims against KRG exports

Baghdad to file new claims against KRG exports Flares burn at the Khurmala Dome processing facility, a key gathering station for Kurdish exports. (BEN LANDO/Iraq Oil Report) Iraq’s central government is filing new legal claims in its ongoing battle to prevent the autonomous Kurdistan region from independently exporting oil to international markets.On Thursday, lawyers representing Baghdad will file a new claim – as well as an amendment to a previous claim – against an oil tanker filled with Kurdistan-exported crude, which has been idling off the coast of Texas.On Friday or Monday, they will also file a claim in a Greek court against the owner of many tanke… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up for a free trial .

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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BP Signs Fresh Deal on Iraq Production Goals

LONDON— BP PLC said Thursday it reached an agreement with the Iraqi government to lower the production target for the vast Rumaila oil field and extend a BP-led group’s time frame to manage the resource. BP signed a deal in 2005 to boost Rumaila’s production from less than 1 million barrels a day at the time to 2.85 million by 2016—a goal which BP said would have made it the world’s second-largest producing field, behind Saudi Arabia’s supergiant Ghawar field. Rumaila currently produces about 1.3 million barrels a day, a BP spokesman said. More recently, the Iraqi government has been negotiating to lower production targets for several fields, including Rumaila. Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaiby said in December that the government was working to renegotiate the Rumaila deal. BP said Thursday that under the new agreement it plans to bring production to 2.1 million barrels a day "within […]

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Jordan secures gas exports from Israel

Israel’s Delek Group signed the letter with the National Electric Power Co. of Jordan. "The estimate scope of the binding agreement [outlined in the letter] is for the supply of an overall amount of 45 billion cubic meters [1.6 trillion cubic feet] over a period of 15 years," the Israeli company said. Jordan in the past has struggled to find a reliable source of natural gas in part because of downstream problems in Egypt. In February, Jordanian companies Arab Potash and Jordan Bromine secured a total gross quantity of 66 billion cubic feet of natural gas from the Tamar field, also located off the Israeli coast Leviathan, with an estimated 18 trillion cubic feet of gas, should go onstream in 2016. Much of the reserves from the offshore field are already designated for exports to regional customers. Tamar is estimated to hold as much as 10 trillion cubic feet […]

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Statoil wades deeper into Colombia

"We are gaining access to a vast underexplored frontier area through early access at scale, which is in line with Statoil’s exploration strategy," Nick Maden, a senior vice president for Statoil’s exploration activities in the Western Hemisphere, said in a statement. Statoil, for an undisclosed sum, acquired a minority share in two offshore areas in Colombia from Repsol. Statoil in July made its debut in Colombia in a deal with Repsol and the Colombian subsidiary of Exxon Mobil. Much of the country’s oil is focused inland in the foothills of the Andes and in the Amazonian jungle. Colombia holds an estimated 2.4 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, though offshore is considered frontier territory. While no reserve potential was available, Repsol has already conducted seismic surveys offshore to get a better understanding of the license area.

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China Vets Investors For a Unit Of Sinopec

China is kicking off a potentially significant experiment in injecting some entrepreneurial juice into its state-owned firms. State-owned China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. , known as Sinopec, last week started the process of vetting would-be investors in a new unit that operates more than 30,000 gasoline stations and 23,000 convenience stores in some of the richest areas of the country. Some 37 companies and consortia—including Chinese Internet power Tencent Holdings Ltd. —have expressed interest, according to people familiar with the deal. Sinopec is selling as much as a 30% stake in the unit, Sinopec Sales Co., which is valued by the company at $56 billion. Some of the potential investors, such as Tencent, are also signing up for business partnerships with the unit, according to an announcement by Sinopec. Those partners will get priority consideration for investment spots, Sinopec’s chairman, Fu Chengyu , said in an interview. The Chinese […]

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