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As Oil Plummets, How Much Pain Still Looms For US Energy Firms?

URL: http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/136705/As_Oil_Plummets_How_Much_Pain_Still_Looms_For_US_Energy_Firms With nearly a quarter of US energy shares’ value wiped out by oil’s 6-month slide, investors are wondering if the sector has taken enough punishment. NEW YORK, Jan 12 (Reuters) – With nearly a quarter of U.S. energy shares’ value wiped out by oil’s six-month slide, investors are wondering if the sector has taken enough punishment and whether it is time to pile back in ahead of earnings reports later this month. The broad energy S&P 1500 index gained more than 4 percent over the past month, suggesting many believe markets have already factored in the pain caused by oil prices tumbling by more than half since June below $50 a barrel. Yet since the start of this year, most energy stocks have given up some of those gains, revealing anxiety that some nasty surprises might still be lurking somewhere and that last month’s bounce may not […]

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Enbridge tapped for Gulf of Mexico pipeline

Enbridge tapped to build pipeline system for Hess Corp. developments in the Gulf of Mexico. (UPI/Shutterstock/tcly) HOUSTON, Jan. 13 (UPI) — Midstream company Enbridge said it was working with its upstream partners at Hess Corp. to oversee pipeline developments from a Gulf of Mexico oil field. Enbridge said it will build, own and operate the $130 million project that will start in the deepwater Stampede project and terminate 16 miles away with a connection to a third-party pipeline system. "This project is an attractive investment opportunity for Enbridge and we are pleased to be working with Hess and the other producers on this development," Greg Harper, president of pipeline and processing systems for Enbridge, said in a Monday statement. Hess Corp. launched development plans for its deepwater Stampede project in the Gulf of Mexico in late October. The company said it expects to pull at most 80,000 barrels of […]

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As Oil Slips Below $50, Canada Digs In for Long Haul

ENLARGE A machine works at the Suncor Energy Inc. mine near Fort McMurray, Alberta, on June 19, 2014. Bloomberg News CALGARY—In the escalating war of attrition among top oil-producing nations, Canada’s biggest oil-sands mines have a message for the market: Don’t look to us to cut production. Long the unloved stepchild of so-called unconventional crude production, the oil sands have lured some of the world’s top energy producers to a remote corner of Northern Alberta where the heavy oil deposits are richest. There, they have plowed billions of dollars into building up a sprawling industrial complex amid the surrounding forests. And even as oil prices settled below $50 a barrel Monday for the first time in nearly six years, those companies are unlikely to shut off the tap anytime soon thanks to those huge upfront costs, combined with long-term break-even points and lengthy production lives. Unlike shale oil, which […]

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Oil States’ Budgets Face Crude Awakening

ENLARGE Energy-producing U.S. states are paring budget forecasts and planning spending cuts amid a plunge in prices that is testing their reliance on revenue from the oil patch. From Texas to North Dakota, states that benefited from a surge in domestic oil production in recent years are now bracing for reduced collections of extraction levies known as severance taxes and royalties as prices fall and companies cut back on drilling. In turn, income- and sales-tax growth could slow as producers cut jobs. While most energy-rich states have amassed ample rainy-day funds in anticipation of the oil industry’s historic booms and busts, the falling prices have budget writers scrambling to adjust earlier fiscal projections that had assumed much higher crude-oil prices. In Texas, the country’s top oil producer, officials on Monday said the windfall from the recent oil-shale boom will carry over to the budget for the next two fiscal […]

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NREL enzyme enables conversion of biomass to sugar up to 14x faster than current alternatives; changing the economics of conversion

« Lufthansa Group aircraft will fly from Oslo on biokerosene beginning in March; deal with Statoil | Main | Toyota introduces all-new Tacoma with new 3.5L non-hybrid Atkinson cycle engine » Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed an enzyme that can enable the conversion of biomass to sugars up to 14 times faster and more cheaply than competing catalysts in enzyme cocktails today. The enzyme called CelA, a cellulase from the bacterium Caldicellulosiruptor bescii , could thus could change the economics of biofuel conversion. In one scenario, the best commercially used enzyme converted sugars at a 30% extent in seven days. CelA converted to double that extent. And while it took the alternative enzyme seven days to achieve that conversion, CelA, with a small boost from an extra beta glucosidase, achieved double in just about two days. Among CelA’s many […]

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Tight oil boom can explain only part of drop in US oil product imports

We continue to look at what impact US tight oil has on global oil markets, in this post the reduction of US petroleum product imports. This analysis shows that only around one quarter of a drop of 1.7 mb/d since 2005/06 can be explained by the tight oil boom. Fig 1: US product imports The graph shows that US product imports peaked already in 2005/06, long before the tight oil boom started. The drop between that peak and 2010 was around 1 mb/d. Remember that the US went into recession end 2007.  A further drop of 700 kb/d happened during the tight oil boom. (1)    US product imports from Venezuela The biggest drop came from Venezuela and Virgin Islands. Fig 2: US product imports from Venezuela Product imports from Venezuela are in long-term decline since 1997.  In 1999 el Comandante  Chavez came to power, re-instating quotas and trying to […]

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Why Europe no longer fears the Russian gasman

Why Europe no longer fears the Russian gasman thumbnail A MILD winter and robust European Union policy have blunted the edge of what was once Vladimir Putin’s most effective foreign-policy weapon: the politicised export of gas. Contrary to some expectations, Russian gas has been flowing to Europe across all four main export pipelines this winter, while the Kremlin’s flagship new pipeline project, South Stream, has come to a mysterious and embarrassing end. Now the focus is on the EU to see if it will push ahead with the prosecution of Gazprom, Russia’s main gas exporter, for years of anti-competitive practices. Why has Russia lost its hold on European gas? European policymakers still remember the shocks of 2006 and 2009, when Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine amid a row about prices and debts, leading to heating crises and factory closures in countries such as Slovakia and Hungary, and making […]

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Oil price crash bankrupting ‘small oil’

Sherri McDaniel is already feeling the sting of the drop in crude oil prices from more than $115 per barrel in June to less than $50 in early January. She is president of ATEK Access Technologies, a small Minneapolis firm that owns TankScan, a wireless monitoring system that keeps track of fluid levels in oil tanks. Oil companies that use the system are starting to postpone orders, as they take a cautious approach to spending. “In the oil fields, they are starting to pull back pretty heavily,” McDaniel said. “They are literally taking tanks and laying them down on their sides.” As a result, she explained, “we have a number of big orders that are temporarily on hold.” A derrick hand works on an oil rig drilling into the Bakken shale formation outside Watford City, North Dakota. Getty Images ATEK Access Technologies is one of many small and midsize […]

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North Dakota oil output forecast tabulated using internal model

WILLISTON, N.D. Jan 12 (Reuters) – A stark breakdown from North Dakota projecting how falling oil prices could affect production was formulated using proprietary corporate data and a state official’s personal model. Late last Thursday, the Department of Mineral Resources caused a stir in world oil markets by releasing slides from a presentation to the state legislature that included a range of output forecasts based on different oil price scenarios, including one showing production would begin to decline by the middle of this year if crude prices remained at current levels. The projections presented by Lynn Helms, head of the state’s energy regulatory agency, cut to the quick of a pivotal question for global oil traders and executives: How quickly will U.S. shale producers, particularly those in the booming Bakken of North Dakota, respond to the collapse in oil prices? While consultants and analysts have been frantically reviewing and […]

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Nissan CEO Says Leaf Electric Car Is Due for Upgrade

The self-proclaimed king of electric vehicles is welcoming General Motors Co. to the party, saying the more the merrier. Nissan -Renault Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn , speaking to media at the Detroit Auto Show Monday, said the auto maker’s Leaf electric car is in line for an upgrade. Currently capable of traveling less than 100 miles on a charge, the Leaf is far behind what’s coming — GM’s Chevy Bolt, for instance, is slated to launch in 2017 with a 200-mile range. Mr. Ghosn said there are big things in store for the little Leaf, but didn’t elaborate on details. “You can expect us to come along with a lot of enhancements.” The Leaf has been on the market for several years, selling over 75,000 units in the U.S. since 2011. Mr. Ghosn expects sales to grow in 2015 by double-digit margins. In the meantime, as BMW AG, Audi […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple