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U.S. Drilling Retreat Deepens as Oil Rigs Fall Below 900

(Bloomberg) — U.S. oil explorers idled oil rigs for the 14th straight week, prolonging the biggest retrenchment in drilling on record. Rigs targeting oil in the U.S. fell by 56 to 866, Baker Hughes Inc. said on its website Friday, the lowest level since March 25, 2011. The Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, the nation’s biggest oil field and one of its oldest, lost the most, dropping 23 rigs to 305. The U.S. rig total slid to the lowest since November 2009. The country has sidelined 709 oil rigs in 14 weeks as a price collapse has prompted the nation’s energy producers to cut billions in spending and eliminate thousands of jobs. The retrenchment threatens to slow the shale boom that turned the U.S. into the world’s largest fuel exporter. Oil analysts, traders and investors have been monitoring rig counts to determine when output will retreat enough […]

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Oil-Sands Rules Get Tougher as Alberta Seeks Less Damage

(Bloomberg) — Oil-sands producers will be forced to reduce waste water and to clean up and restore mined land within a decade as Alberta seeks to reduce environmental damage. Regulation announced by Alberta Environment Minister Kyle Fawcett in Edmonton on Friday, include limits on water withdrawals from the Athabasca River in the Canadian province’s north. Companies will also be required to slow the growth of tailings ponds, which hold waste water from bitumen mining, and restore land that existing ones are on after 10 years of the end of the mine’s life, the minister said. Oil-sands operators have come under attack for environmental impact including emissions of greenhouse gas and fresh-water use, helping to stall pipeline construction such as TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL. Production of bitumen, forecast to more than double by 2030, is Canada’s fastest-growing source of carbon emissions. The new rules are a more “realistic” policy framework […]

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Shale Producer Whiting Draws Exxon, Others as Suitors

Whiting Petroleum Corporation’s South Texas facilities. Source: Whiting Petroleum Corp. via Bloomberg News. (Bloomberg) — Whiting Petroleum Corp., the North Dakota oil explorer, has attracted interest from Exxon Mobil Corp. and Continental Resources Inc. as it explores a sale of the entire company, people with knowledge of the situation said. Hess Corp. and Statoil ASA are also looking at Denver-based Whiting, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Whiting has set up a data room for potential buyers to evaluate the company’s financial information and asked them to submit bids next week, the people said. The discussions are ongoing and there’s no guarantee a deal will be reached. A potential deal for Whiting, the largest producer in North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation, may be the first in an anticipated pickup of merger activity for U.S. energy producers as they grapple with heavy debt and […]

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Speed Limits May Not Stop Fiery Oil Spills, U.S. Rail Chief Says

(Bloomberg) — Lower speed limits for railroads may be ineffective at keeping oil trains on the tracks and preventing massive fireballs, such as those triggered in a series of recent derailments, the chief U.S. railroad regulator said. “If you’re going to slow trains down, you’re going to have to slow them down to 12 miles an hour,” Sarah Feinberg, acting chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, told reporters in Washington Friday. “And then you would just have other dangers. People queuing up at grade crossings while train car after train car of volatile product goes by,” she said. “That’s not good either.” A surge in U.S. oil production has increased the amount of crude moved by rail 5,000 percent since 2009, much of it from North Dakota’s booming Bakken field. A corresponding jump in accidents, including a 2013 oil-train derailment and explosion that killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, […]

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BP Win Cutting Gulf Spill Tab by $4 Billion Fought by U.S.

Light trails made by passing automobiles are seen as vehicles stand at fuel pumps at a gas station operated by BP Plc in Guildford, U.K. Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg (Bloomberg) — The U.S. is fighting a judge’s decision that shaved more than $4 billion off the maximum pollution penalties BP Plc must pay for its 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster, the biggest offshore oil discharge in U.S. history. The spill size was set in January by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans at 3.2 million barrels. He also rejected claims London-based BP was reckless in preparing for a disaster or had acted unreasonably in responding to the spill. The U.S. didn’t say which part of the court ruling it was appealing in a notice filed Friday. The U.S. estimated the spill at 4.2 million barrels, which could have triggered a maximum $18 billion fine. BP appealed the spill-size […]

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Oil industry must join U.S. railroads to boost train safety: regulator

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Rail operators are going to great lengths to prevent oil train derailments but the energy sector must do more to prevent accidents from becoming fiery disasters, the leading U.S. rail regulator said on Friday. Oil train tankers have jumped the tracks in a string of mishaps in recent months that resulted in explosions and fires. Several of those shipments originated from North Dakota’s Bakken energy fields. Officials have warned that fuel from the region is particularly light and volatile. Sarah Feinberg, acting head of the Federal Railroad Administration, said the energy industry must do more to control the volatility of its cargo. "(We) are running out of things that we can put on the railroads to do," she said. "There have to be other industries that have skin in the game." A national safety plan for oil trains, due to be finalized in May, would require […]

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Fossil Fuels Will Save the World (Really)

ENLARGE Workers tend to a well head during a hydraulic fracturing operation outside Rifle, Colo., on March 29, 2013. Increased production has driven down oil prices. Photo: Associated Press The environmental movement has advanced three arguments in recent years for giving up fossil fuels: (1) that we will soon run out of them anyway; (2) that alternative sources of energy will price them out of the marketplace; and (3) that we cannot afford the climate consequences of burning them. These days, not one of the three arguments is looking very healthy. In fact, a more realistic assessment of our energy and environmental situation suggests that, for decades to come, we will continue to rely overwhelmingly on the fossil fuels that have contributed so dramatically to the world’s prosperity and progress. In 2013, about 87% of the energy that the world consumed came from fossil fuels, a figure that—remarkably—was unchanged […]

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Big Oil’s Broken Business Model

Many reasons have been provided for the dramatic plunge in the price of oil to about $60 per barrel (nearly half of what it was a year ago): slowing demand due to global economic stagnation; overproduction at shale fields in the United States; the decision of the Saudis and other Middle Eastern OPEC producers to maintain output at current levels (presumably to punish higher-cost producers in the U.S. and elsewhere); and the increased value of the dollar relative to other currencies. There is, however, one reason that’s not being discussed, and yet it could be the most important of all: the complete collapse of Big Oil’s production-maximizing business model. Until last fall, when the price decline gathered momentum, the oil giants were operating at full throttle, pumping out more petroleum every day.  They did so, of course, in part to profit from the high prices.  For most of the […]

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Peak oil explained with cartoons

Login Username: Password: Remember me Login as hidden 1 of 49 Humor and peak oil 3 Comments on "Peak oil explained with cartoons" Plantagenet on Thu, 12th Mar 2015 9:23 pm  Cartoons about how expensive oil is don’t make much sense in the middle of an oil glut when oil prices have fallen to near historic lows when adjusted for inflation. GregT on Thu, 12th Mar 2015 10:35 pm  Oil prices ajusted for inflation during non recessionary periods going back 130 years have hovered between 20 and 30 dollars a barrel. We are currently paying almost double those prices today. As usual planter, you are completely wrong. Northwest Resident on Thu, 12th Mar 2015 11:09 pm  The Teacher made a boo-boo. Name (required) Email Address (required) Website

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Brent falls below $57 on dollar rally

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Brent crude fell below $57 a barrel on Friday as a strengthening dollar weighed on commodity markets after profit-taking by Asian investors earlier in the session. Asian investors were also mulling the impact from a tentative deal that would end a strike by U.S. refinery workers. Oil prices on Friday were initially supported by the U.S. dollar .DXY, which posted its biggest one-day fall in a month on Thursday, as it retreated from a 12-year high against a basket of major currencies on an unexpected fall in U.S. retail sales. But the greenback rallied to send Brent falling below $57 a barrel towards the end of the Asian trading day. A stronger greenback makes commodities denominated in the dollar more expensive for holders of other currencies and limits their purchases of commodities and other assets. Brent for April delivery LCOc1 was trading down 25 cents at […]

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