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As Oil Price Drops, Texas Lenders Watch for Fallout

ENLARGE Banker Hugh B. "Trip" Ruckman III hasn’t lent large sums to the drillers dotting the Texas landscape near Karnes City. But his bank has lent to small hotels that rely on oil workers for much of their business. Photo: Ben Sklar for The Wall Street Journal KARNES CITY, Texas— Hugh B. “Trip” Ruckman III ’s family ties to the Karnes County National Bank date to 1901 when it started making loans to cattle ranchers and farmers in this rural community in South Texas. The mobile-home camps and sandstone-colored motels along Highway 181, where some rooms regularly cost more than high-rise hotel rooms in Houston and San Antonio, are newer additions to the local economy. So are the 18-wheelers that race down the streets and the mud-splattered pickup trucks that fill the Dairy Queen parking lot at lunchtime, their sides dotted with energy-company logos. Mr. Ruckman’s community bank doesn’t […]

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IMF unveils fresh $17.5bn Ukraine rescue plan

Christine Larage: the Ukrainian authorities are demonstrating courage to reform we’ve never seen before The International Monetary Fund on Thursday said it would provide a new four-year $17.5bn bailout for war-torn Ukraine that is expected to lead to a restructuring of Kiev’s privately-held debts so that it can shore up its public finances. The new rescue replaces a $17bn programme launched less than a year ago but abandoned when the conflict with Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern districts worsened, undermining the country’s public finances. The IMF had distributed $4.5bn in the first programme, bringing the fund’s total commitment to Ukraine to $22bn. More On this story On this topic IN Europe With separate EU and US pledges already made — and expected promises of bilateral loans from the world’s biggest economies worth several billion dollars — the size of the financial aid package will reach $40bn. But it may […]

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Rig Trends: Idle Times Ahead for Offshore Rig Fleet

Rig owners are retiring older rigs and making plans to cold stack others in an effort to reduce costs in the current market climate. As the reality of low oil prices settles in, operators and rig owners are being forced to take hard looks at where and when they will spend money. Oil companies are reducing 2015 spending budgets significantly, which means in many cases rig contracts will not be renewed and several others are being looked at as possible early termination candidates. In turn, rig owners are having to make tough decisions on whether to continue to market or cold stack currently active rigs in addition to retiring older or long-idled rigs. In the past few months, Hercules Offshore, Diamond Offshore, Noble Corporation and ENSCO have cold-stacked a combined total of eight jackups and four semisubs. On the retirement front, since the fourth quarter of last year, Transocean […]

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Total Canadian oil production up 8 percent

One Comment on "Total Canadian oil production up 8 percent" I know the following is off topic, however it needed to be posted somewhere, in which this chief economist on CNBC explains that all this talk of the economy accelerating is wrong – when you go to the link below click on debt rattle then on the video. Great stuff! He says the economy for the last five years continues to move along at about 2% growth. http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2015/02/debt-rattle-february-11-2015/ • Truth to Power: This Man Will Never Be Invited Back On CNBC (Zero Hedge) While Steve had a number of hard to hear quotes for the CNBC anchors – such as: “There is no acceleration in underlying economic activity,” and “There’s this wrong concept that I keep on hearing about in the financial press about the acceleration in economic growth… It’s not happening!” A stunned Simon Hobbs rebuffs, “That’s a […]

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Ukraine Peace Talks Yield Cease-Fire Deal

ENLARGE Russian President Vladimir Putin, third left, shakes hands with his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, as they participated in peace talks on resolving the Ukrainian crisis in Minsk, Belarus, on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters MINSK, Belarus—The leaders of France and Germany brokered a renewed deal to end Ukraine’s 10-month conflict with Russia-backed separatists, reviving and amending a failed September cease-fire agreement in marathon talks that lasted through the night. Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters that the deal calls for a cease-fire starting on Sunday, with each side pulling back heavy weapons, as well as steps to give greater autonomy to the Russia-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine. Details of the agreement weren’t immediately available. The deal came after 17 hours of talks in the Belarus capital of Minsk involving Mr. Putin, French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier […]

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Putin: Leaders agree deal for Ukraine cease-fire

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday emerged from marathon Ukraine peace talks by announcing a new cease-fire deal, but questions remained whether Ukraine and the pro-Russian rebels have agreed on its terms. Putin told reporters that the cease-fire will be effective starting from Sunday, but he added that he and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko disagreed on assessing the situation in a key flashpoint. The government-controlled town of Debaltseve, a key transport hub between the two main rebel-controlled cities in the east, has been the focus of intense fighting in recent weeks as the rebels sought to encircle the Ukrainian troops there. Putin said that the rebels consider the Ukrainian forces surrounded and expect them to surrender, while Ukraine disagrees with that. He added that they agreed with Poroshenko to clarify the situation. Putin urged the warring parties to show restraint. Poroshenko said the parties agreed […]

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Deep-water wind energy coming to Germany

German wind farm readies for mid-2015 service after installation of turbines at deep-water site. Photo courtesy: E.ON With 80 wind turbines in place, German utility company E.ON said Wednesday it was one step closer to activating a deep-water wind farm off the German coast. The company said turbines were installed during the weekend at the site of the Amrumbank West wind project, situated about 20 miles northwest of the German island of Helgoland. Infrastructure construction began in January 2014. "We are confident that we will soon be able to feed electricity generated by the first turbines into the public grid as planned," Dominik Schwegmann, lead project manager of Amrumbank West, said in a statement. The project is slated for mid-2015 completion . At its peak, Amrumbank West will supply 288 megawatts of wind energy to the German grid, enough to meet the annual electricity demands of 300,000 average households. […]

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Greece, euro zone fail to agree on debt, to try again on Monday

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Greece’s new leftist government and its international creditors failed to agree on a way forward on the country’s unpopular bailout and will try again on Monday, with time running out for a financing deal. In seven hours of crisis talks in Brussels that ended after midnight, euro zone finance ministers were unable to agree even a joint statement on the next procedural steps. Both sides played down the setback, insisting there had been no rupture. But Greek stock prices, which whipped higher after hours in New York on talk of an accord, sagged with disappointment when it emerged that Greece’s laconic new Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis had walked away from a draft deal to extend current credit terms after conferring with fellow Greek officials. "We had an intense discussion, constructive, covering a lot of ground, also making progress, but not enough progress yet to come to […]

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France’s Total Plans to Cut Jobs, Sell Assets After Big Loss

Total Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne. ENLARGE Photo: Associated Press PARIS— Total SA plans to eliminate 2,000 jobs by 2017 and sell assets worth $5.5 billion this year as the French oil and gas group adapts its business to a world of sharply lower oil prices. The company, one of Europe’s biggest oil producers, said it would freeze the hiring of new staff at its production, refinery, and petrochemicals operations as part of plans to cut costs by $4 billion this year. Total said its aim is to reduce costs so it can turn a profit with an oil price of $70 a barrel compared with $110 a barrel last year. Crude prices have fallen by more than half to around $50 a barrel since last summer. The announcements came as Total swung to a net loss of $5.66 billion in the three months to end-December from a net profit […]

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Total to sell $5bn of assets as it cuts UK refinery capacity

Total said capacity at the Lindsey refinery in Lincolnshire would be halved France’s Total said on Thursday it would sell $5bn of assets this year and cut capacity at Britain’s Lindsey oil refinery as the European energy group reported billions of dollars in asset writedowns and slashed capital spending. The more than 50 per cent plunge in international oil prices sent adjusted net income for the fourth quarter of last year 17 per cent lower, to $2.8bn, against the same period in 2013. Total’s shares fell 1 per cent in early trading in Paris. The result was at the top end of analysts’ forecasts. However, the company took a $6.5bn impairment charge on its Canadian oil sands business, US shale gas and troubled European refining operations. That charge and other one-off items led to a headline loss of $5.7bn for the quarter, against a profit of $2.2bn the previous […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple