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Militants attack government forces near Iraq’s Baiji refinery

BAGHDAD Islamic State militants attacked government forces and their Shi’ite militia allies on Saturday, killing 11 near the city of Baiji as part of the battle for control of Iraq’s biggest refinery, army and police sources said. Four suicide bombers in vehicles packed with explosives hit security forces and the local headquarters of the Shi’ite militias in the area of al-Hijjaj, 10 km (6 miles) to the south of Baiji town, near the refinery, sources at the nearby Tikrit security operations command said. Iraqi government forces and powerful Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias face Islamic State on several fronts in Iraq, a major oil producer and OPEC member. They include areas around Baiji refinery, north of Baghdad, and the city of Ramadi west of the capital, seized last month by Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni group that poses the biggest threat to Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. […]

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Oil prices end week on low note

Gains in European industrial production not enough to balance against a tilt toward the supply side, sending crude oil prices lower. Photo by akiyoko/Shutterstock. NEW YORK, June 12 (UPI) — Slow increases in industrial production in European economies were unable to offset supply concerns in energy markets, sending crude oil prices down Friday. Brent crude oil prices fell about three-quarters of one percent shortly after the opening bell on Wall Street to $64.61, continuing the late-week slump that followed a string of market reports from global energy groups. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries this week said it was keeping its production levels stable on the expectation that global demand would increase. The International Energy Agency, meanwhile, said output from Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates helped push OPEC supplies to their highest levels since August 2012. Starting in June 2014 oil prices began falling steadily below […]

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« For Oil Price, Bad Is The New Good

Lately, oil prices have gone up when they should have gone down. In the last week, OPEC decided not to cut production and the two major energy agencies reported that the world over-supply problem is getting worse. Brent oil price increased from $62 to $65. Bad is the new good. The expected bad news on Friday, June 5 that OPEC would not cut production was skillfully cloaked in positive statements about growing demand. On Monday, June 8, Brent opened at $62.69 and rose to $65.70 over the next two days. On Tuesday, June 10, the EIA published its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) that showed that the production surplus responsible for low oil prices had increased in May to almost 3 million barrels per day (bpd). Figure 1. World liquids production surplus or deficit and Brent crude oil price. Source: EIA and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc. (Click image to […]

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Outflows from energy ETPs continue in May: BlackRock

LONDON Investors continued to pull money from energy exchange-traded products (ETPs) in May after a rebound in oil prices stumbled as the global supply glut showed no signs of eroding. Some $540 million exited energy ETPs globally last month, following net withdrawals of $1.2 billion in April, data from asset manager BlackRock showed. Investors piled into oil ETPs in the first quarter chasing an oil price rebound. But Brent crude futures prices slipped just over 2 percent in May, and some investors decided to take profits ahead of a potentially much bigger downward correction. "The gains were getting a bit ahead of themselves given the elevated inventory levels," said Martin Arnold, global commodity and FX strategist at ETF Securities, an issuer of ETPs. He noted that OPEC had not cut production, with Saudi Arabia raising output to a record high of around 10.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in […]

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Cash for Oil: China and Iran Strike New Oil Payment Plan

(Photo by Mark Ralston – Pool/Getty Images) Oil and gas deals between China and Iran are set to change. Last week, several news agencies in the region, including the Iran Daily and Trend News Agency said that Iran and China have agreed that China would pay in cash for the oil and gas it buys from Iran. China is currently the biggest buyer of Iranian crude oil, purchasing more than 440,000 barrels per day (b/d), but Tehran imports goods instead of receiving cash from these sales. The Iran Daily said that Iran can sell about one million b/d of oil under a preliminary nuclear agreement but the country has to use a maze of routes to receive its money. The two countries reached an agreement on payments partly in cash and the transfer of money to a third country to pay for imports. “We wanted to transfer part of […]

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Colombia: Oil Pipeline Attacked In Cordoba City

The Transandino oil pipeline was attacked in a rural area of Cordoba city, in Narino department, W Radio reported June 12. In the past 15 days, there have been three attacks against the pipeline. Authorities have not verified whether the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is behind the attack, but FARC was responsible for nine other attacks against energy infrastructure and security forces in the departments of Cauca, Caqueta, Narino and Putumayo.

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Success of Kurdish Forces Is a Rare Bright Spot for U.S. Policy in Iraq

Photo Kurdish fighters after a clash with the Islamic State in March. They have managed to retake and hold significant territory. Credit Iraq/Reuters SULTAN ABDULLAH HILLS, Iraq — Since retaking these barren hills in northern Iraq from the jihadists of the Islamic State, Kurdish pesh merga forces have dug in: excavating trenches, unfurling barbed wire and coordinating with the United States-led military coalition to identify targets for airstrikes. The new outposts dotting the hilltops provide clear views of villages where Islamic State jihadists build truck bombs and launch attacks, but the Kurdish forces have no plans to advance, saying the territory is not theirs to fight for. “Now our main job is defense,” said Maj. Gen. Mohammed Khoshawe, a field commander. “To defend the Kurds, this is the farthest we go.” The ability of Kurdish forces in northern Iraq to retake and defend territory has been a rare success […]

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Oil bosses break long climate silence with urgent initiative

LONDON For an industry used to cautious, long-term evolution, the speed at which leaders of Europe’s biggest oil and gas companies moved to take a joint stand in the climate debate speaks volumes. Discrete talks in the eyrie of Davos in January led to a spontaneous, light bulb moment on a stage in Oslo in February. The result: a joint statement two months later. The executives agreed they had to go public, and with alacrity. Faced with growing pressure from shareholders, vocal divestment campaigns by the media and advocacy groups, there looms the critical moment of the United Nations climate summit in Paris in December. The industry campaign will speed up before then. "In the past we thought it was better to keep a low profile on the issue. I understand that tactic, but in the end it’s not a good tactic," Shell CEO Ben van Beurden told his […]

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Oil-Sands Operations Resume After Wildfire

Both major oil-sands producers’ operations are located in Alberta’s Cold Lake region, about 300 kilometers (186 miles) northeast of Alberta’s capital, Edmonton. The blaze had shut in nearly 10% of Canada’s oil-sands output, or about 233,000 barrels a day, since it was detected May 22. Canadian Natural said full production has resumed at its 80,000-barrel-a-day Primrose site, which had been evacuated due to the closure of an access road, and its 25,000-barrel-a-day Kirby South operation, which had cut back output after the shutdown of a third-party pipeline. Cenovus said operations have returned to normal at its nearby Foster Creek site, which has a capacity of 135,000 barrels a day and is jointly owned with ConocoPhillips . COP -0.81 % The Calgary-based company said it expects the 11-day shutdown to reduce second-quarter production by about 10,500 barrels a day and crimp annual production by about 2,600 barrels a day. However, […]

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Oil exploration in the U.S. Arctic continues despite current price environment

graph of Alaska crude oil production, as explained in the article text Alaska’s crude oil production has declined from 1.8 million barrels per day (MMb/d) in 1991 to 0.5 MMb/d in 2014, and it is expected to continue declining through 2040. Almost 75% of Alaska’s crude oil production from 1990 to 2012 was from the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk River fields in the central North Slope, which respectively produced 4.9 billion and 1.7 billion barrels of crude oil over this period. Crude oil production in Alaska is sensitive to the challenging environment—including variable ice conditions and limited time without ice coverage—as well as pipeline economics . However, recent conditional approval granted to Royal Dutch Shell to begin exploratory drilling in the Burger Prospect in the Chukchi Sea may help to offset future declines in crude oil production from other state and federally managed resources in the region. U.S. Energy […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple