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Low Oil Prices Prompts Apache to Lay Off Workers

Apache Corp. confirmed to Rigzone on Thursday plans to lay off workers. Apache is the latest company to announce layoffs due to weakening oil prices, which have prompted companies to slash their 2015 budget plans and reduce their workforces. The staff reduction constitutes less than 5 percent of the Houston-based company’s global workforce, an Apache spokesperson told Rigzone. “The decision to part with employees is always a very difficult one, and it’s a step we took after pursuing other measures including a slowdown in activity and reduction in budgets given the current price environment,” the spokesperson noted. A recent Rigzone survey found that oil and gas managers were planning to scale back their hiring plans this year due to declining oil prices and an uncertain economic environment. Karen Boman has more than 10 years of experience covering the upstream oil and gas sector. Email Karen at [email protected] . WHAT […]

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Schlumberger Cuts 9,000 Jobs as Oil Slump Portends Uncertainty

Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB) , the world’s biggest oilfield-services company, tackled the “uncertain environment” of plummeting crude prices head-on by cutting 9,000 jobs and lowering costs at a vessels unit. The 7.1 percent workforce cutback, along with the reduction and reassessment of its WesternGeco fleet, were among steps leading to a $1.77 billion fourth-quarter charge in anticipation of lower spending by customers in 2015, the Houston- and Paris-based company said in an earnings report Thursday. Energy companies, coping with oil worth less than half its price six months ago, are expected to cut spending in the U.S. by as much as 35 percent this year, according to Cowen & Co. The number of onshore U.S. rigs could fall by as much as 750 this year, Wells Fargo & Co . said in a note Wednesday. That would be a 43 percent decline from the 1,744 in operation at the start […]

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Shale Gas Lobby Backfires in Pennsylvania

Sign image via weaverphoto/flickr. Creative Commons license. 2.0. This past November, Gov. Tom Corbett became the first standing governor in the last 40 years in Pennsylvania to lose a second term reelection. As the GOP scored overwhelming victories nationally that November night, incumbent Gov. Corbett lost by more than 325,000 votes to Democrat Tom Wolf. Corbett was a powerful first term governor who oversaw the huge shale gas industry drilling boom in the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale formation which vaulted the state into the middle of a unexpected U.S. energy boom. By the time Corbett took office for his first term, Pennsylvania’s shale gas industry was creating jobs in several of the depressed regions of the state and had created an opportunity for a tax revenue base which would have been the envy of virtually all mid-Atlantic and northeast region states. Yet these facts did not translate into success for […]

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British shale set for real-time monitoring

British Geological Survey said it plans to study two proposed hydraulic fracturing sites in real time.. Photo by Christopher Halloran/Shutterstock LONDON, Jan. 15 (UPI) — In a regional first, the British Geological Survey said Thursday independent monitors would study two hydraulic fracturing sites in Lancashire in real time. "This ground breaking research will provide new scientific insight and innovative ways of monitoring the environment impact of shale gas development," John Ludden, BGS executive director, said in a statement. The British government in 2012 enacted new restrictions on hydraulic fracturing, ending a moratorium enforced after minor tremors were reported near Lancashire drilling sites. Shale pioneer Cuadrilla Resources has two applications before a county council with the aim of exploring for shale natural gas. A consortium led by BGS and university partners will carry out groundwater, regional air quality and seismic activity research at two proposed fracking sites in Lancashire. "It […]

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Tullow Oil Cuts Exploration Budget

ENLARGE Oil exploration companies, such as Tullow Oil, don’t have other parts of their business to fall back on when oil prices fall. Bloomberg News LONDON— Tullow Oil PLC Thursday said it was making its largest ever write off of $2.7 billion before tax, mostly resulting from unsuccessful exploration programs and the drop in value of licenses, discoveries and assets resulting from the plunge in oil prices . The write offs include a decrease in value of $600 million across all of Tullow’s assets, including producing oil fields, oil in the ground and equipment. They also include $1.2 billion related to discoveries in previous years that now have no prospect of commercialization amid the weaker oil prices and unsuccessful exploration drilling. The price of oil has more than halved in the past six months, hitting the exploration and production sector hard. Unlike the major oil companies BP PLC and […]

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North Sea Pays the Price of Oil Slide

ENLARGE BP’s Valhall redevelopment project in the North Sea. The company intends to cut 300 jobs in the area as part of a shake-out brought about by the slide in oil prices. European Pressphoto Agency LONDON— BP PLC said Thursday that it would lay off about 300 people in the North Sea hub of Aberdeen, Scotland, in the biggest sign yet of the problems besetting the U.K.’s primary oil-producing region. While the world-wide slide in the price of oil has focused attention on the U.S.’s relatively new shale fields—which are partially responsible for the global oil glut—it is the mature, high-cost fields such as those in the North Sea that seem likely to suffer most. At prices much below $75 a barrel or so, some of the North Sea’s reserves might be too expensive to develop. BP said Thursday that it is still committed to the region, and that […]

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Urgent N Sea oil review ordered as job axe falls on Aberdeen

Challenge: Aberdeen is centre of the UK oil sector The British government has ordered an urgent review of the North Sea oil industry after a collapse in prices that has prompted hundreds of job losses and raised fears for the survival of ageing fields. BP’s UK arm told staff in Aberdeen on Thursday that it would cut 300 staff and contractor jobs from its 3,500-strong North Sea business — the latest in a series of job losses and pay cuts in the sector. More On this story On this topic IN UK Economy During a visit to Aberdeen to discuss the impact of slumping oil prices, Ed Davey, the energy secretary, said he had instructed Andy Samuel, the chief executive designate of Britain’s new Oil and Gas Authority, to “lead an urgent commission, working with industry, to identify the key risks to [UK] oil and gas production”. Mr Davey […]

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BP Faces Up to $13.7 Billion in Fines in Deepwater Gulf Spill Case

ENLARGE Thursday’s decision narrows the range of penalties BP could face. Bloomberg News A federal judge ruled Thursday that BP PLC is liable for spilling just over 3 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, 24% less than federal prosecutors had claimed. The ruling means that BP faces a maximum penalty of $13.7 billion under the U.S. Clean Water Act, down from the $18 billion sought by the Justice Department. The decision by Judge Carl Barbier surprised analysts following the case, coming days before BP is set to appear in his court for a related trial on how much it should pay for each barrel spilled. That tranche of the complex case, which begins on Tuesday, will determine the total fine under the Clean Water Act. Thursday’s decision narrows the range of penalties BP could face, which could make a settlement […]

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Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says

Carl Zimmer A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them. “We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event,” said Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an author of the new research, which was published on Thursday in the journal Science . But there is still time to avert catastrophe, Dr. McCauley and his colleagues also found. Compared with the continents, the oceans are mostly intact, still wild enough to bounce back to ecological health. “We’re lucky in many ways,” said Malin L. Pinsky, a marine biologist at Rutgers University and another author of the new report. “The impacts are accelerating, but they’re not so bad we can’t reverse them.” Scientific assessments […]

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Scientists: Human activity has pushed Earth beyond four of nine ‘planetary boundaries’

Clmate change: A severe drought plagued a third of Queensland, Australia in 2013. Destabilizing the global environment could make Earth less hospitable for humans. (David Gray/Reuters) At the rate things are going, the Earth in the coming decades could cease to be a “safe operating space” for human beings. That is the conclusion of a new paper published Thursday in the journal Science by 18 researchers trying to gauge the breaking points in the natural world. The paper contends that we have already crossed four “planetary boundaries.” They include the extinction rate; deforestation; the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorous (used on land as fertilizer) into the ocean. “What the science has shown is that human activities — economic growth, technology, consumption – are destabilizing the global environment,” said Will Steffen, who holds appointments at the Australian National University and the […]

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