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BP commits to new North Sea spending

Bob Dudley’s BP seeks to breath new life into North Sea developments with major investment announcement. File photo by Roger L. Wollenberg/UPI LONDON, Aug. 5 (UPI) — Though the global energy sector is crimping available revenue streams, BP said Wednesday it planned billions of dollars of spending in the North Sea. "These are challenging times for the industry and we are having to make hard choices," BP North Sea Regional President Trevor Garlick said in an emailed statement. "Nonetheless, we remain committed to improving the competitiveness of the North Sea and to maximizing economic recovery from our fields." BP in a quarterly earnings report released last week said it lost $5.8 billion, which in part was a reflection of the July 2 settlement reached to resolve claims associated with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The British company said it earned $228 million from oil […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Ankara blames Kremlin for gas pipeline delays

Turkey blames Russian planners for delays in momentum of the planned Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline. Photo by Kodda/Shutterstock ANKARA, Turkey, Aug. 5 (UPI) — Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said there were delays in planning on the Russian side in developments of the planned Turkish Stream gas pipeline. Yildiz told the state-backed Anadolu News Agency that Russian planners delayed delivering route coordinates for the pipeline through his country. "Turkey could not begin any construction without these coordinates," he said. Russian energy company Gazprom said in February it surveyed the Turkish land route for the 110-mile section of pipeline from the Black Sea. The Kremlin said the Turkish gas project will help ensure European energy security. South Stream, a longer version of the pipeline, was envisioned as a European network before the Russian government pulled it off the table in late 2014. Russia meets about a quarter of the […]

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Oil Prices Rise Ahead of U.S. Inventory Data

LONDON—Oil prices were trading higher on Wednesday ahead of closely watched U.S. supply data. Oil slipped to multi-month lows earlier in the week on renewed concerns about the global oversupply of crude. Traders are awaiting the latest weekly data on U.S. crude oil inventories and production later in the day to gauge how the low price environment is affecting supply. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, rose 0.7% to $50.34 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas Intermediate futures were trading up 0.7% at $46.07 a barrel. Late on Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute reported that U.S. oil inventories fell by 2.4 million barrels last week. The industry group said that gasoline supplies fell by 946,000 barrels, while distillate stocks increased by 1.7 million barrels in the week. The U.S. Energy Information Administration will release its official inventory report later Wednesday […]

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Brent inches up above $50 ahead of U.S. oil stocks data

A car is filled with gasoline at a gas station pump in Carlsbad, California August 4, 2015. Benchmark Brent crude oil prices inched up just above a key support level of $50 on Wednesday, recovering from multi-month lows, as investors await U.S. oil inventories data to gauge supply. Oil markets paused for a breather after prices tumbled about 20 percent in July because of a supply glut. OPEC continued to pump at record rates in July and U.S. shale oil production showed no sign of abating as drillers added more rigs in past two weeks. A landmark nuclear deal struck between Tehran and world powers has sparked concerns of more Iranian oil returning to global markets and worries about fuel demand growth has also dragged down oil prices. "The market is still digesting news of Iran coming back with more supply," Ben Le Brun, a markets analyst at OptionsXpress […]

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Oil Prices Rise But Hold Near Multimonth Lows

NEW YORK—Oil prices rose Tuesday on expectations that inventory data due Wednesday would show U.S. crude-oil supplies fell last week. Concerns about an economic slowdown in China , coupled with persistently high production from some of the world’s biggest petroleum suppliers, have soured investor sentiment in recent weeks. Oil prices plunged into a bear market last month and have continued to fall in August. Prices rose slightly Tuesday after sinking to multimonth lows on Monday. Light, sweet crude for September delivery settled up 57 cents, or 1.3%, at $45.74 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent, the global benchmark, rose 47 cents, or 0.9%, to $49.99 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. Analysts surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expect the U.S. Energy Information Administration to report Wednesday that U.S. crude-oil supplies fell by 1.5 million barrels last week. The closely watched weekly EIA report is due […]

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Natural Gas Prices Rise as Weather Warms

By Timothy Puko Natural gas prices made their largest one-day gains in nearly three weeks Tuesday as weather forecasts show a heat wave settling in over Texas. The front-month September contract gained 6.4 cents, or 2.3%, to $2.812 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The boost sent gas back to the middle of the 31-cent trading range it has settled in every session for nearly two months. Consumption of gas-powered electricity often rises in the summer as people turn on their air-conditioning units. Tuesday’s forecasts show temperatures more than five degrees Fahrenheit above normal settling in for the next week in Texas, one of the country’s largest markets for cooling and power. Both Dallas and Houston will make it over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, according to private forecasters. "The Texas heat is going to be a big deal in the coming 1-2 weeks as the […]

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Oil Companies’ Spending Cuts Unlikely to Be Enough

LONDON—The world’s biggest oil companies have vowed to bring down the costs of big projects in the face of slumping oil prices, but the unrelenting price weakness—with crude below $50 a barrel—suggests they could have to dig deeper still. In the past year, as oil prices plunged 60% from highs of $114 in 2014, U.K. energy giant BP BP 0.16 % PLC began testing new projects for profitability around $60 a barrel, down from $80 a barrel last year. Its Anglo-Dutch rival Royal Dutch Shell RDS.A -0.17 % is testing projects at prices as low as $50 a barrel, though its overall price outlook is between $70 and $110 a barrel. Under other circumstances, those would seem like draconian cuts. Billions of dollars less is being spent on everything from exploration and project engineering to construction equipment and drill rigs. But last week, when all of the world’s biggest […]

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The Oil Crash Has Caused a $1.3 Trillion Wipeout

It’s the oil crash few saw coming, and few have been spared as it erased $1.3 trillion, the equivalent of Mexico’s annual GDP, in little more than a year. Take billionaire Carl Icahn. When crude was at its peak in June 2014, the activist investor’s stake in Chesapeake Energy Corp. was worth almost $2 billion. Today, oil has lost more than half its value, Chesapeake is the worst performer in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and Icahn has a paper loss of $1.3 billion. The S&P 500, by contrast, is up 6.9 percent in that time. State pension funds and insurance companies have also been hard hit. Investment advisers, who manage the mutual funds and exchange-traded products that are staples of many retirement plans, had $1.8 trillion tied to energy stocks in June 2014, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “The hit has been huge,” said Chris Beck, […]

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Oil industry frets about another lost decade: Kemp

An oil pump is seen during an extraction process in Lagunillas, Ciudad Ojeda, in the state of Zulia, Venezuela, March 20, 2015. Oil is an inherently cyclical business. The point is remarkably simple but it is amazing how often it gets forgotten by forecasters and investors. In the century and a half since the modern oil industry was founded with the drilling of Edwin Drake’s well in 1859, real prices have doubled in the space of three years on no fewer than six separate occasions, and halved on four. If prices remain around $50 for the rest of the year, 2015 will be the fifth time real prices have fallen more than 50 percent in the space of less than three years. Sharp price changes over short periods have therefore been the norm and the long period of relative stability between 1931 and 1969 was the exception. It follows […]

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Oil price unlikely to recover as Saudi refining hits market

An offshore oil platform is seen in Huntington Beach, California September 28, 2014. Oil prices are unlikely to recover soon as Saudi Arabia’s drive to boost its refining activities is expected to force refineries elsewhere to slow down their operations, thus creating an even bigger glut of unwanted crude oil. Two big new refineries in Saudi Arabia are adding to growing supplies of diesel and jet fuel, which could mean other refiners will use less crude as they respond to the oversupply of oil products. Oil prices currently near $50 a barrel are already under pressure, in part from an oversupply of fuels produced by refiners enjoying healthy margins from cheap crude as a result of the U.S. shale boom and record OPEC output. A big difference now is that the world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, whose new refineries have added to a flood of the fuels now […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple