Category:

Exclusive: Hess-owned oil railcars involved in North Dakota derailment

WILLISTON, N.D. (Reuters) – A BNSF train that derailed in central North Dakota on Wednesday was carrying railcars owned by Hess Corp, 10 of which caught fire and forced the evacuation of a nearby town, the oil producer told Reuters late Wednesday. Emergency crews worked into the night to extinguish the fire. No one was injured. Hess, the third-largest North Dakota oil producer, said BNSF is leading cleanup efforts but added it stands ready to assist. The New York-based company said it is "fully compliant" with new North Dakota crude-treatment standards that went into effect last month. The standards, designed to mitigate the incendiary effect of crude-by-rail disasters, require combustible elements be filtered out of crude oil. It remains unclear whether the new standards helped reduce the fire caused by the derailment, but politicians, first responders and other witnesses described a subdued scene. "The scene is very anticlimactic and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Tesla’s New Battery Doesn’t Work That Well With Solar

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk  introduced a new family of batteries designed to stretch the solar-power revolution into its next phase. There’s just one problem: Tesla’s new battery doesn’t work well with rooftop solar—at least not yet. Even Solar City, the supplier led by Musk, isn’t ready to offer Tesla’s battery for daily use. The new Tesla Powerwall home batteries come in two sizes—seven and 10 kilowatt hours (kWh)—but the differences extend beyond capacity to the chemistry of the batteries. The 7kWh version is made for daily use, while its larger counterpart is only intended to be used as occasional backup when the electricity goes out. The bigger Tesla battery isn’t designed to go through more than about 50 charging cycles a year, according to SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass. Telsa CEO Elon Musk points at the sun. Here’s where things get interesting. SolarCity, with Musk as its chairman, has decided not to install the 7kWh Powerwall that’s optimized […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Transocean Swings to a Loss on $881 Million in Charges

Transocean Ltd. RIGN -1.13 % posted a first-quarter loss as the offshore oil driller logged more than $800 million in charges related to the downsizing of its fleet in response to lower crude prices. Last quarter, Transocean logged a $992 million charge to correct the value of its contract drilling business, using up its remaining goodwill. On Wednesday, the company said it was recording a $481 million impairment from its Deepwater Floater asset group and $393 million in impairments of assets classified as held for sale. In 2014, Transocean recognized a loss of $788 million from the impairment of its Deepwater Floater asset group and a loss of $227 million, or $179 million after taxes, from scrapping a number of floaters and related equipment. The Switzerland-based company, which boasts the world’s largest fleet of offshore drilling rigs, spent billions of dollars to expand its fleet right before oil prices […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Oil Slump Drives Election Upset in Canadian Province

ENLARGE Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley vowed in her victory speech Tuesday to put an end to the ‘boom-and-bust roller coaster’ of tying provincial finances to the fortunes of its oil patch. Photo: dan riedlhuber/Reuters CALGARY—The long-serving center-right government of Canada’s oil-rich Alberta province became the first major Election Day casualty of slumping global oil prices, as a left-leaning government swept to power in a vote that shocked Canada’s political establishment. Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party, which has governed the western Canadian province since 1971—the longest-serving governing party in Canadian history—fell to a distant third place in Tuesday’s election, behind the leftist majority and a resurgent right-wing opposition party. The upset by the New Democratic Party threatens to slow investment and development in Alberta’s oil patch if companies dial back in anticipation of new regulatory hurdles or costs. Alberta’s once-roaring economy has already ground to a virtual standstill, with real […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Hampton Roads April coal exports down 37.2% from year ago

Coal exports from terminals in Virginia’s Hampton Roads region totaled 2.5 million st in April, down 28.3% from March and 37.2% lower than the year-ago month, data from the Virginia Maritime Association showed Wednesday. The association does not comment on its monthly figures, but low seaborne prices are likely behind the dip in exports. Discounting February’s export total of 2 million st, which was affected by loading delays due to bad weather, the April figure is the lowest since November 2010. April’s figures also show a weak comparison to March loadings, which were boosted by delayed loadings from February. Article continues below… Platts Coal Trader provides the latest prices for key benchmark coals, as well as: Daily pricing for tons and allowances for SO2 and NOx emissions The exclusive Platts OTC Broker Index, a market assessment compiled from three of the largest and most respected coal brokers What happened […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

California Adopts “Unprecedented” Restrictions On Water Use As Drought Worsens

Early last month we warned that California’s drought was approaching historic proportions and that if climatologists were to be believed, the country may see a repeat of The Dirty Thirties as experts cite “Dust Bowl” conditions. Governor Jerry Brown has called for statewide water restrictions aimed at reducing consumption by 25%. Now, the conservation calls are getting much louder as the state’s water regulators have approved “unprecedented” measures aimed at curtailing the crisis. Via AP : California water regulators adopted sweeping, unprecedented restrictions Tuesday on how people, governments and businesses can use water amid the state’s ongoing drought, hoping to push reluctant residents to deeper conservation. The State Water Resources Control Board approved rules that force cities to limit watering on public property, encourage homeowners to let their lawns die and impose mandatory water-savings targets for the hundreds of local agencies and cities that supply water to California customers. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

The Return Of Peak Oil – Worrying Signs From U.S. And Russia

Since around 2005 many countries have increased their oil production but more have decreased. But the combined production of the United States and Russia have kept the world on a slight uptrend since that time. World oil production jumped in 2011, hardly moved at all in 2013 but it was up by more than 1.5 million barrels per day in 2014. And after such a huge gain everyone and their brother were singing “peak oil is dead’. But if you scroll down through the 37 major world oil producers it becomes obvious that a majority of nations have peaked and most of them are in steep decline. The above chart is EIA data; however, the next four charts below are JODI data with the last data point February 2015. The data on all charts is thousand barrels per day. In the last decade it has been two of the […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
Category:

Reserve Growth in West Siberian Oil Fields

What is Reserve Growth? BP :  In general, a portion of a field’s probable and possible reserves tend to get converted into proved reserves over time as operating history reduces the uncertainty around remaining recoverable reserves: an aspect of the phenomenon referred to as ‘reserves growth’. Wiki : Experience shows that initial estimates of the size of newly discovered oil fields are usually too low. As years pass, successive estimates of the ultimate recovery of fields tend to increase. The term reserve growth refers to the typical increases in estimated ultimate recovery that occur as oil fields are developed and produced. Basically the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission have stringent reserve booking requirements for oil companies. As a result early booked reserves of any given field is very conservative. Also, any company would much rather have reserves too low and increase them later than have them too high and have to […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Einhorn’s Doomsaying Falls on Ears Deafened by Latest Oil Rally

Money manager David Einhorn’s doomsday outlook for shale oil drillers so far is failing to resonate with investors. A pessimistic assessment of the industry by the president of Greenlight Capital Inc. on Monday briefly shook the stock of the companies Einhorn targeted, dropping EOG Resources Inc. by as much as 2.8 percent after he spoke out and Concho Resources Inc. by as much as 3.5 percent. By the end of the day, though, both companies recorded gains, probably reflecting continued investor confidence that oil’s price plunge from more than $100 a barrel in 2014 is spurring cost cuts and new drilling strategies in an industry long known for its profligate spending. Crude prices have risen by 36 percent since March 17, eliminating much of the decline of the preceding nine-month oil-market rout. The oil price drop “sped up the ‘reset’ process,” said Andrew Cosgrove, an energy analyst for Bloomberg […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Is United States Energy Independence in Sight?

The data analysis arm of the US Department of Energy is forecasting that despite low oil prices, the US will become energy independent within a decade.  That result depends on frugality as much as resource abundance, and it includes substantial volumes of energy trade with the rest of the world. The US Energy Information Administration’s latest Annual Energy Outlook features the key finding that the US is on track to reduce its net energy imports to essentially zero by 2030, if not sooner. That might seem surprising, in light of the recent collapse of oil prices and the resulting significant slowdown in drilling . EIA has covered that base, as well, in a side-case in which oil prices remain under $80 per barrel through 2040, and net imports bottom out at around 5% of total energy demand. Either way, this is as close to true US energy independence as I […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple