Category:

Weak Iraqi oil demand hurts Norway’s DNO

Norwegian energy company DNO International set it was setting capacity records in the Kurdish north of Iraq, though a weakened market left it short on cash. File Photo by UPI/Maryam Rahmanian. OSLO, Norway, May 6 (UPI) — Though it reached its capacity target at an oil field in the Kurdish north of Iraq, Norwegian energy company DNO said Wednesday it suffered heavy losses. DNO said it hit a daily production record at the Tawke field of just over 150,000 barrels of oil, adding it had the installed capacity to hit the 200,000 bpd mark. "Discussions are underway with the [Kurdish] Ministry of Natural Resources to set out future production levels, including the split between export deliveries and local sales," it said in a statement. DNO said its production for the first quarter of 2014 was 45,744 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which includes oil from the Tawke field […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

U.S. Military Worries Key Iraqi Refinery Could Fall to Islamic State

ENLARGE Smoke rises above the Beiji area in Iraq on April 16. Control of the Beiji oil refinery has been bitterly contested between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants, U.S. military officials said. Photo: mohammed sawaf/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Pentagon officials said they are worried that a key Iraqi oil refinery that is held by Iraqi commandos could fall to Islamic State control in the coming days. For weeks, U.S. military officials have said that control of the Beiji oil refinery has been bitterly contested between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants, who have long held nearby towns. But Islamic State fighters have made inroads in recent days, reinforcing their positions around the refinery following their loss of Tikrit to an Iraqi force backed by U.S. airstrikes, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. “It is not looking good,” said a U.S. defense official. U.S. warplanes conducted four strikes near Beiji […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Kurdistan receives April budget payment

U.S. President Barack Obama drops by Vice President Joe Biden’s meeting with KRG President Masoud Barzani in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on May 5, 2015. (PETE SOUZA/White House) Recommend 3 people recommend this. Sign Up to see what your friends recommend. The autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has received a payment of 543 billion Iraqi dinars ($445 million) from Baghdad for the month of April, as the two sides continue their attempts to implement a tenuous oil export and revenue sharing deal.Ahmed Abdulrahman, the spokesman for the KRG Ministry of Finance, said the money will be used to pay the overdue March salaries of government employees.The payment is the largest made by the federal government to Kurdistan in 2015. The K… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

There’s One Part of the World Where the Oil Industry Is Booming

A flame from a Saudi Aramco oil installion is seen in the desert near the oil-rich area of Khouris, 160 kms east of Riyadh. Photographer: Marwan Naamani/AFP via Getty Images As the oil industry tightens its belt after the worst price slump in a generation, the state-owned giants of the Middle East are taking the opposite tack. Saudi Arabian Oil Co., Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. and Kuwait Petroleum Corp. are using a record number of drilling rigs and boosting production, a contrast to international companies from Exxon Mobil Corp. to Royal Dutch Shell Plc, which are shelving projects and slashing costs. “While oil companies around the world are cutting capital and downsizing their investment programs, Saudi Aramco continues to take a long-term view,” Chairman Khalid Al-Falih said during a March trip to China. It’s a strategy that may allow the three state-owned companies to boost their 20 percent […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Iran Sees $75 Oil Amid Plans for Post-Sanctions Output Boost

The silhouette of pumpjacks is seen on the site of an oil well outside Williston, North Dakota, U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015. A plunge in global energy prices that has put some North Dakota oil rigs in a deep freeze has yet to chill the state’s hiring climate. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg Iran, OPEC’s fifth-biggest producer, sees $70-$75 per barrel as a suitable price for crude, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said, as markets show signs of a partial recovery from last year’s collapse. “Nobody is satisfied with current prices and instabilities and fluctuations,” Zanganeh said Wednesday at a news conference in Tehran. “I think everyone is very satisfied with $70 to $75,” he told reporters later. Brent crude, an international benchmark, was trading at $67.69 a barrel Thursday at 7:46 a.m. in London. Iran would start to boost crude output in 10 days if international economic sanctions against […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Iranian-German Meeting Suggests New Engagement

BERLIN—Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh will meet German Energy Minister Sigmar Gabriel in Berlin on Thursday, a rare encounter with a government official in Europe amid hopes a nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers could be completed. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh. A spokeswoman for Germany’s Economics and Energy Ministry declined to provide further details on the meeting, which will be closed to the press. Mr. Gabriel is also Germany’s vice chancellor and minister for economics in Chancellor Angela Merkel ’s government. Iran has been courting European Union countries to invest in its vast energy potential, offering to export its natural gas to Europe as it seeks it diversify away from Russia. German Energy Minister Sigmar Gabriel. The contact would be among the highest levels of bilateral engagement so far with a European government, suggesting western nations are now willing to engage directly with Iran outside the framework […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Nigeria Borrows Money to Pay Government Salaries

Africa’s richest economy is borrowing money to pay salaries as it struggles through a "difficult cash crunch" brought on by halved oil prices, Nigeria’s finance minister revealed. The news comes as Nigeria prepares to welcome a new government at the end of this month and the country’s naira currency remains in a slump, hovering between 180 and 220 to the US dollar. It was trading at 160 a few months ago. Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala tried to be upbeat in a speech on Tuesday after lawmakers approved the 2015 budget – revised three times because of slashed oil prices that provide 80 percent of revenue for the government of Africa’s biggest petroleum producer. She said "revenue challenges" had prohibited the release of any funds for capital expenditure this year but that food prices and single-digit inflation remained quite stable. And she said the economy still was on course to grow […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Cuba insists it has oil; U.S. companies still uninterested

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba unveiled new data on Wednesday it said confirmed there were billions of barrels of oil beneath its Gulf of Mexico waters but admitted there was little interest in new exploration even with the thaw in U.S. relations. The United States and Cuba have vowed to restore diplomatic relations after more than 50 years of animosity, but the comprehensive U.S. trade embargo remains in place. While U.S. tourism, transportation and agriculture companies position themselves for Cuban business, oil companies have proven less eager since three exploratory wells came up dry in 2012. Low oil prices and new opportunities in Mexico’s liberalized oil sector are also seen depressing interest. "Despite the opening we haven’t encountered U.S. company interest," Pedro Sorzano, commercial director of state oil monopoly CubaPetroleo (Cupet), told reporters at Cuba’s annual geological sciences convention. Cuba hopes the discovery of oil offshore will free it from […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Indonesia Considers Rejoining OPEC

Sudirman Said, Indonesia’s minister for energy and mineral resources, in Jakarta on Oct. 26. ENLARGE Photo: Reuters JAKARTA—Indonesia is considering rejoining the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries as an observer after leaving the group six years ago, a minister said Thursday. “We want to have an interaction with the market [by becoming an observer in OPEC],” the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Sudirman Said said. He said Indonesia has in the past been invited by OPEC to attend meetings as an observer. Indonesia discontinued its OPEC membership when it expired on Jan. 1, 2009. It has been a net oil importer since the early 2000s. The government is struggling to increase the country’s crude-oil production from about 830,000 barrels a day currently, while domestic consumption continues to rise. Indonesia’s renewed interest in attending OPEC meetings comes after a slump in oil prices since last summer that has […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

In China, a tug of war over coal gas: Cleaner air but worse for the climate

HEXIGTEN, CHINA — Amid the rolling grasslands of northern China, a gleaming new industrial complex offers a beguiling vision for the nation’s leaders. Here, on a sandy plain among scattered flocks of sheep, a flagship plant promises to use China’s surplus coal while simultaneously delivering cleaner skies over its crowded eastern cities. Modeled on a similar and much older plant in North Dakota, the Hexigten complex in China’s Inner Mongolia transforms coal into methane by treating it with heat, steam and oxygen. It then pipes the supposedly cleaner gas to Beijing to heat and power the capital’s homes. In the past two years, with anger over the country’s smoggy skies rising and demand for coal declining, China has enthusiastically embraced coal gasification. It has proposed to build more than 50 plants like this in its sparsely populated north and west and to create by far the largest synthetic natural […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple