Category:

New supply patterns and additional disruptions push California gasoline prices higher

Republished May 12, 2015, 11:30 a.m., to correct an error in the text. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update Supply disruptions in the tightly balanced and relatively isolated California gasoline market have increased wholesale and retail gasoline prices over the past several weeks. This comes after markets had adjusted to compensate for lost production following the February explosion and fire at ExxonMobil’s refinery in Torrance, California . Average retail prices for regular gasoline in California as a whole, and in Los Angeles specifically, have increased by 57¢ per gallon (¢/gal), and 63¢/gal, respectively, in the past three weeks, while U.S. average retail gasoline prices have increased by 20¢/gal. The costs of adjusting supply sources, along with planned and unplanned refinery outages and delayed resupply, have contributed to the gasoline price increases. The spot price in Los Angeles for CARBOB (California Reformulated Blendstock for Oxygenate Blending) […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Short-Term Energy Outlook

Market Prices and Uncertainty Report This is a regular monthly supplement to the EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook . Contact: James Preciado ( [email protected] ) Full Report Crude Oil Prices: Crude oil prices continued to rise in April and reached their highest levels of the year. The North Sea Brent front month futures price settled at $65.54 per barrel (b) on May 7, an increase of $8.44/b since the close on April 1 ( Figure 1 ). The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) front month futures price rose by $8.85/b over the same period to settle at $58.94/b on May 7. Figure 1: Historical crude oil front month futures prices Although current oil market conditions still show production outpacing consumption, a combination of factors may tighten markets in the near future and are lending support to current prices. Surplus production capacity was estimated at 1.7 b/d in April, the lowest since […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Encana Books Impairment Charge of $1.2 Billion in 1st Quarter

Factoring out a $1.2 billion impairment charge and other items, the Calgary, Alberta-based energy company’s operating earnings tumbled 98%, but still came in ahead of analyst expectations. Encana, which has worked to shift its focus to oil and gas liquids assets and away from natural gas , said liquids production jumped 78% from a year earlier to about 120,700 barrels a day. “We are well positioned to benefit as oil prices rise,” Chief Executive Doug Suttles told analysts on a conference call. Overall production, however, averaged about 430,100 barrels of oil equivalent a day, down from 536,100 barrels a day a year earlier. It said the drop reflects the sale of lower-margin assets and its shift to a higher-margin, liquids-weighted production mix. It also came amid a slump in global crude prices that has led the company to slash the number of active drilling rigs from 44 in November […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Mixed bag for U.S. gasoline prices, AAA says

U.S. drivers paying some of the highest prices at the pump for 2015, but also the lowest for this time of year since 2009, motor club AAA says. Photo by Earl S. Cryer/UPI WASHINGTON, May 12 (UPI) — The retail price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States is the highest so far for the year, but the lowest for this date since 2009, AAA said. Tuesday’s national average price of $2.66 per gallon of regular unleaded gasoline is about 4 cents, or about 1.5 percent, higher than this time last week. Motor club AAA noted the national average price has increased nearly every day for a month to reach the highest level of the year. "However, relatively low crude costs continue to translate to significant savings at the pump for consumers," the motor club said. "[The] national average is about a dollar less than a year […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Shell’s Alaska nod met with outrage

Greenpeace joins the chorus of voices expressing outrage after the federal government gave condition approval to Shell to start drilling in the arctic waters off the coast of Alaska. File photo / Earl S. Cryer/UPI ANCHORAGE, Alaska, May 12 (UPI) — A federal decision to give conditional approval to Shell to drill in the arctic waters off the coast of Alaska was an egregious error, advocacy groups said. "Instead of holding Shell accountable and moving the country towards a sustainable future, our federal regulators are catering to an ill-prepared company in a region that does not tolerate cutting corners," Greenpeace Senior Research Specialist Tim Donaghy said in a statement emailed to UPI. The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management conditionally approved Shell’s multi-year exploration plan for the Chukchi Sea. Before the company can start drilling, it needs additional permits from state and federal agencies, including those governing the protection […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

At the gas pump, US biofuel lobby scores a point against big oil

NEW YORK In a long-running battle between oil refiners and the U.S. farm lobby over the future of ethanol fuel, biofuel producers may have just made a small, but important dent in big oil’s formidable defenses. Over the past few months, privately held retailers Kum & Go and Sheetz have become the first significant chains to announce plans to start selling E15, a gasoline with 15 percent of ethanol, 50 percent more than the typical U.S. blend. By the end of 2016, those two retailers plan to add E15 at pumps at 125 stations. That will more than double the number of U.S. outlets offering cheaper fuel with a higher ethanol content than the standard E10 blend that contains 10 percent of ethanol. If retailers continued to add stations at a similar pace over the next five years, there would be some 1,300 stations offering E15. That would still […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Russia Was Right: Shale in Europe Has Proved a Dud

Workers prepare pipes used in the drilling of shale gas at a rig operated by Exalo Drilling SA in Lubocino, Poland. Photographer: Bartek Sadowski/Bloomberg When Cuadrilla Resources Ltd. opened an office in Poland in 2009, it had a reason to be optimistic: the shale boom was transforming the U.S. into the world’s largest producer of natural gas. To the companies rushing to imitate that success in Europe, Poland looked like the next Texas. Six years later, the U.K. explorer has yet to drill its first Polish well — and that’s in the country that’s most eager to allow hydraulic fracturing in Europe. The so-called super-majors like Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc have packed up and moved on. “It’s not easy,” said Marek Madeja, Cuadrilla’s director of well services in the country. “The costs of drilling in Europe are much, much higher than in the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Maersk Oil makes North Sea discovery

Maersk Oil confirms presence of hydrocarbons at exploration well in the Danish waters of the North Sea. File Photo by UPI/Shutterstock/James Jones Jr. COPENHAGEN, Denmark, May 12 (UPI) — About a month after starting production in the region, Maersk Oil said Tuesday, it found a new source of reserves in the Danish waters of the North Sea. Drilled in December, the company said it was able to confirm the presence of hydrocarbons in the Xana-1X exploration well in the northern part of the Danish sector of the North Sea. "At present the partners are in the process of assessing the technical and commercial implications of the discovery and looking at potential follow-up," Martin Rune Pedersen, managing director of the company’s Danish business unit, said in a statement. Analysis this year from Wood Mackenzie found the region brought in $19 billion in capital spending last year. With oil prices falling […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

The oil crash: something wicked this way comes

The recent oil price crash signals the impending demise of the oil and gas industry as a major world energy producer. That should be a good thing, in principle, but something wicked may still come out of the process. With the ongoing collapse of the oil prices, we can say that it is game over for the oil and gas industry, in particular for the production of “tight” (or “shale”) oil and gas. Prices may still go back to reasonably high levels, in the future, but the industry will never be able to regain the momentum that had made its US  supporters claim “energy independence” and “centuries of abundance.” The bubble may not burst all of a sudden, but it surely will deflate. So, what’s going to happen, now? The situation is, to say the least, “fluid”. A great rush is ongoing to convince investors to place their money […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

World population-food supply balance is becoming increasingly unstable, study finds

Enlarge Credit: Jm Verastigue/public domain Researchers report that as the world population increases and food demand has grown, globalization of trade has made the food supply more sensitive to environmental and market fluctuations. This leads to greater chances of food crises, particularly in nations where land and water resources are scarce and therefore food security strongly relies on imports. The study assesses the food supply available to more than 140 nations (with populations greater than 1 million) and demonstrates that food security is becoming increasingly susceptible to perturbations in demographic growth, as humanity places increasing pressure on use of limited land and water resources . "In the past few decades there has been an intensification of international food trade and an increase in the number of countries that depend on food imports ," said Paolo D’Odorico, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and one of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple