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Seeking new revenue, Iraq revamps Basra oil marketing

Tankers dock at the Al-Basra Oil Terminal, the principal export point for Iraqi oil. (BEN LANDO/Iraq Oil Report) Recommend 315 people recommend this. Sign Up to see what your friends recommend. Iraq is preparing to upgrade the way it markets and exports oil from Basra in an effort to maximize revenues and combat a crippling financial crisis.The country has typically sold a single grade of crude, "Basra Light," from all of its southern export outlets. But now Iraq is planning to market a second grade, "Basra Heavy," which will allow the country to sell oil from more fields without compromising the quality of most exports."We announced that we will sell two [grades]," said Fala…

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Nigeria’s Buhari closes in on historic election victory

ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigerian opposition contender Muhammadu Buhari, an ex-general who first won power three decades ago in a military coup, closed in on a historic election victory on Tuesday, maintaining a hefty lead in the vote count in Africa’s most populous nation. According to a Reuters tally collated from 33 of Nigeria’s 36 states, the 72-year-old Buhari had more than 14 million votes, testament to the faith Nigerians have put in him as a born-again democrat intent on cleaning up Nigeria’s corrupt politics. Buhari’s support compared to 11 million for President Goodluck Jonathan, whose five years at the helm of the richest country in Africa have been plagued by corruption scandals and an insurgency by Islamist Boko Haram militants. One of Jonathan’s big support bases in the oil-producing Niger Delta is yet to report but the gap is so large that most analysts said it was impossible to […]

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Nigeria: Oil Giant Total Sells Nigerian Oil Field Stake for $569 Mn

French oil giant Total said Monday that it has sold its stake in a Nigerian oil field to a local company for $569 million (523 million euros). Total’s sale of its share in the onshore Oil Mining Lease 29 to Aiteo Eastern E&P comes after the French group made two similar divestments in Nigeria. The three transactions reached a sum of $1 billion. "These transactions … reduce our exposure to non-operated blocks onshore Nigeria, and allow us to focus on our core, operated developments," said Patrick de La Chevardiere, Total’s Chief Financial Officer. The group added that the divestment is "in line with the Federal Government of Nigeria’s aim of developing Nigerian companies in the sector". Energy groups have been slashing their investments in a bid to shore up earnings, as crude prices have collapsed by about 60 percent since June.

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Statoil finds more gas offshore Tanzania

Norway’s Statoil announced new gas discovery offshore Tanzania. The company said it will catch its breath now to peruse next steps. File Photo by UPI/Shutterstock/James Jones Jr. STAVANGER, Norway, March 30 (UPI) — Tanzania may be ripe for future offshore natural gas development, though time is needed for appraisal after the latest find, Norway’s Statoil said Monday. Statoil announced the discovery of roughly 1 trillion and 1.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Mdalasini-1 well off the Tanzanian coast. Marking the end of the first phase of operations there, the company said its eight discoveries to date combine for approximately 22 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves. Nick Maden, a regional vice president for the company, said in a statement the company views Tanzania as a high prospect gas opportunity, "but there will be a pause in the drilling to evaluate the next steps and to mature […]

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Exclusive: India makes first crude oil purchase for strategic reserve

LONDON (Reuters) – India has bought the first oil for its strategic petroleum reserve (SPR), trade sources said on Monday, marking the start of a round of purchases by the world’s fourth-biggest oil consumer to build up emergency stockpiles. Oil prices have almost halved in the past year due to excess global production, leaving traders looking for any signs of new demand to help absorb the surplus. The sources said state-refiner Indian Oil Corp bought a 2 million barrel cargo of Iraqi crude from Chinese trader Unipec, which will load in May for shipping to the first stage of India’s SPR on the country’s east coast. In addition, state-refiners IOC and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd will buy another three Very Large Crude Carriers between them for the Vizag SPR storage site in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. While the first 8 million barrels for Vizag are relatively small […]

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Elon Musk May Have Scooped Tesla’s Big Announcement

Elon Musk is about to announce a new product that’s not a car. He said so in a mysterious Tweet designed to induce the highest level of nail-biting suspense. But the Elon Musk of two months ago may have told us exactly what we should expect.  “We are going to unveil the Tesla home battery, the consumer battery that would be for use in people’s houses or businesses fairly soon,” Musk said during an earnings conference call in February. He said the product unveiling would occur within the next month or two. Here’s his teaser from today, which drove up shares of Tesla 3.5 percent: Tesla is building the world’s biggest battery factory in Nevada — a $5 billion project that Musk says will reduce the price of battery storage by 30 percent. Combining solar panels with backup capacity could allow homeowners to avoid buying electricity from utilities. If the prices come […]

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Top U.S. Court Questions EPA Emissions Rule for Power Plants

(Bloomberg) — U.S. Supreme Court justices signaled they are divided over Obama administration rules that would cut emissions from 460 coal-fired power plants in an effort to curb birth defects, heart disease and premature deaths. During arguments Wednesday, justices questioned Environmental Protection Agency controls on mercury and acid gases from the plants owned by Southern Co., American Electric Power Co. and other utilities. Lawyers for power companies and some states said the agency didn’t adequately consider costs before imposing rules estimated to cost $9.6 billion a year. “It’s classic arbitrary and capricious agency action,” Justice Antonin Scalia said, referring to a legal standard the court can use to block an agency rule. The Obama administration says it considered costs in how it set the rules but wasn’t required to do so at the initial stage of deciding whether to issue regulations at all. That argument was questioned by Scalia […]

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Texas City Pulls Plug on Fossil Fuels With Shift to Solar

(Bloomberg) — A city in the heart of the oil state of Texas is set to become one of the first communities in the U.S. to wean its residents off fossil fuels. The municipal utility in Georgetown, with about 50,000 residents, will get all of its power from renewable resources when SunEdison Inc. completes 150 megawatts of solar farms in West Texas next year. The change was announced Wednesday. It will be the first city to completely embrace clean power in the state, which is the biggest U.S. producer and user of natural gas. More will follow as municipalities seek to insulate themselves from unpredictable prices for fossil fuels, said Paul Gaynor, SunEdison’s executive vice president of North America. Burlington, Vermont, made a similar move with its purchase of a hydroelectric plant last year. “This will be the first of many,” Gaynor said in a telephone interview. “The city […]

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Texas natural gas, oil production down in latest reporting periods: regulator

Texas’ average rig count and production of oil and gas fell in the latest available reporting periods, the state’s oil and gas regulator said Monday. Texas’ latest average rig count, as of March 20, was 464, down from 598 on February 13, the Railroad Commission of Texas said, citing Baker Hughes statistics. The March rig count represented about 45% of all active land rigs in the US. In March 2014, the commission reported an average rig count of 854. In the commission’s final production estimate for January, the state produced 81 million barrels of oil and 536.3 Bcf of natural gas. The commission’s final production estimate for December was 83.7 million barrels of oil and 553.2 Bcf of natural gas. The commission’s final January 2014 production estimate was 69.9 million barrels of oil and 566.5 Bcf of natural gas. The estimate of Texas’ natural gas in storage in March […]

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EIA inaugurates monthly crude-by-rail shipping information

The US Energy Information Administration is providing monthly data of crude oil shipments by rail for the first time. The new crude-by-rail movements will be integrated with its existing monthly petroleum supply statistics, which already include crude movements by pipeline, tanker, and barge, EIA said. The crude-by-rail data provide a clearer picture of an oil transportation mode which has rapidly grown recently, and is of great interest to policymakers, the public, and the rail and oil industries, EIA Administrator Adam Sieminski said. “EIA expects that the new data it has developed using information provided by the US Surface Transportation Board (STB), along with data from other third-party sources and our own survey data, will provide key insights into oil-by-rail movements, including shipments to and from Canada,” he said. “We welcome the cooperation of the STB as well as Canada’s National Energy Board in making these data accessible.” EIA will […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple