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Gas sales give lift to Israel’s Delek Group

Israeli energy company Delek Group expecting forward momentum through future strategic investments. File Photo by Maryam Rahmanian/UPI TEL AVIV, Israel, Aug. 31 (UPI) — After posting strong second-quarter results, the chief executive officer at Israeli energy company Delek said growth should continue through future investments. Delek, which operates in some of the largest natural gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea, said operating profit for the second quarter increased 69 percent to $69 million. Net income swung from a $152 million loss in the second quarter of 2014 to a $5.5 million gain, driven in large part from sales from the Tamar gas field off the Israeli coast. Members of the Israeli government moved in mid-August to clear the way for the full development of offshore natural gas reserves. The Israel Antitrust Authority had ruled that Delek Group and its partners at Noble Energy, which has headquarters in Texas, control […]

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Eni expects to change Egyptian gas dynamics

Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Italian energy company Eni, says latest gas discovery off the Egyptian coast may be a game changer for the country. Photo courtesy of Eni. CAIRO, Aug. 31 (UPI) — The discovery of what may be the world’s largest gas field off the Egyptian coast could be a sea change for the North African country, Italy’s Eni said. Eni announced the discovery of gas in the deepwater Zohr prospect off the Egyptian coast. With an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in place, it’s the largest ever made in regional waters and potentially the largest in the world . "This historic discovery will be able to transform the energy scenario of Egypt," Claudio Descalzi, the chief executive officer of Eni, said in a statement. "This exploration success acquires an even greater value as it was made in Egypt which is strategic for Eni, and […]

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Protests in Iraq Bring Fast Promises, but Slower Changes

Photo A protest in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square last week. The demands for better public services have grown into calls for broad reform. Credit Karim Kadim/Associated Press BAGHDAD — Surrounded by the clamor of protest — a sea of Iraqi flags, vendors selling coffee and melon drinks, protesters singing the national anthem and railing against politicians — two friends paused and described their dreams. “I want to find a job opportunity,” said one of them, Yasir Abdulrahman, 21, who recently earned an engineering degree but remains unemployed. “I want to build a country. I want an opportunity.” His friend Hussein Ali, 22, quit university to support his family and now works as a taxi driver. He said that even the specter of bombings would not keep him away from the square. “We are only thinking of reforms,” he said. “If you want to change, you have to sacrifice yourself.” For […]

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After Peshmerga victory, homes looted and destroyed

Volunteers with Peshmerga forces clash with Islamic State militants in Daquq, south of Kirkuk, on Sept. 30, 2014. (AKO RASHEED/Reuters) In the wake of a recent military victory against the Islamic State (IS) militant group south of Kirkuk, forces belonging to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have overseen the destruction and looting of homes belonging to displaced Sunni Arab residents.The looting began on Aug. 27 at the end of a major Peshmerga offensive – supported by air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition – which dislodged IS fighters from a half-dozen villages around the Daquq district in southern Kirkuk provinc… 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 for a free trial .

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Gas discovery offshore Egypt rivals Mediterranean giants

Eni SPA expects accelerated development of what it describes as a “supergiant gas discovery ” at its deepwater Zohr prospect offshore Egypt. The company will immediately appraise its discovery, which it says might hold 30 tcf of lean gas in place in an area covering 100 sq km. The Zohr 1X NFW discovery well was drilled to a total depth of 13,553 ft in 4,757 ft of water on Egypt’s Shorouk Block 9. The well hit a 2,067-ft hydrocarbon column in a carbonate sequence of Miocene age with 400 m of net pay, Eni said. The company has future plans to target a deeper Cretaceous upside with a dedicated well. Zohr is the largest gas discovery made in Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, and if early estimates hold true, could become one of the world’s largest natural gas finds, the company said. As Eni begins to fast track development […]

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China factory indexes ebb in new sign of economic weakness

AP Photo HONG KONG (AP) — Chinese manufacturing showed further signs of weakness in August, adding to evidence of an inexorable slowdown in the world’s No. 2 economy despite recent government efforts to support growth. Two factory activity indexes released Tuesday were at multi-year lows. An official manufacturing index based on a survey of factory purchasing managers fell last month to 49.7, the lowest level since August 2012, from 50.0 in July. The index, compiled by the Chinese Federation for Logistics and Purchasing, is based on a 100-point scale on which numbers above 50 indicate expansion. A separate survey, the Caixin purchasing managers’ index, fell to a six-year low of 47.3 from 47.8 in July, although the number was slightly better than a preliminary reading released last month. Caixin’s survey focuses on smaller, private enterprises while the federation’s survey is weighted toward larger, state-owned companies in China’s manufacturing industry, […]

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Big Rail’s little cousins find boon in U.S. oil-by-rail bust

Unused oil tank cars are pictured on Western New York & Pennsylvania Railroad tracks outside Hinsdale, New York August 24, 2015. Amid the rolling mountains surrounding this quiet town in southwest New York state, tucked away on miles-long stretches of underused rail tracks, hundreds of idle oil tank cars attest to the extent of fallout from oil’s rout. The oil tank cars – a year ago sought-after to haul crude from North Dakota to New Jersey – now stand idle as a result of two converging trends: the reversal in U.S. shale oil production and the completion of new pipelines. They show how the pain from the slump in the oil-by-rail industry has spread far and wide. Big rail lines, such as Berkshire Hathaway-owned BNSF Railways or Union Pacific are losing what used to be their fastest-growing source of new traffic; refiners such as PBF Energy are left with […]

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New U.S. oil data shows lower 2015 production: EIA

Stacked rigs are seen along with other idled oil drilling equipment at a depot in Dickinson, North Dakota June 26, 2015. The U.S. oil industry pumped less crude than initially estimated this year, according to new government data that offered the clearest look yet at the impact of drillers’ retrenchment in response to collapsing prices. The downward supply revisions were "unambiguously" bullish for a global market awash with oil, said Credit Suisse global energy economist Jan Stuart, suggesting the oft-cited resilience of U.S. shale producers to lower crude prices might have been overstated. Oil prices surged by as much as $3 a barrel on Monday, with some traders citing the new data. The Energy Information Administration said its new survey-based output data showed the United States pumped a hair below 9.3 million barrels per day in June, down by 100,000 bpd from a revised May figure. The June figure […]

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Walking Oil Rigs Spur Cheaper, Quicker Drilling in Supply Glut

Have you ever seen an oil rig walk ? Some of the newest rigs can travel hundreds of yards to the next well under their own power, lurching along like 150-foot-tall robots on pneumatic legs that raise the equipment five inches at a time, nudging forward at about a foot per minute. While that sounds slow, it is faster and cheaper than dismantling a rig and trucking the parts to a new site nearby. More efficient drilling rigs that cost a third less than just a year earlier are changing the face of the U.S. shale industry, helping boost per-rig output in the four largest fields by at least 40 percent since the crude price plunge began in 2014. While helping producers pump more oil, the new rigs have a downside. Companies such as Helmerich & Payne Inc., Nabors Industries Ltd. and Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. that provide the equipment […]

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Fossil Fuels Losing Cost Advantage Over Solar, Wind, IEA Says

The cost of producing electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind has dropped significantly over the past five years, narrowing the gap with power generated from fossil fuels and nuclear reactors, according to the International Energy Agency . “The costs of renewable technologies — in particular solar photovoltaic — have declined significantly over the past five years,” the Paris-based IEA said in a report called Projected Costs of Generating Electricity. “These technologies are no longer cost outliers.” The median cost of producing so-called baseload power that is available all the time from natural gas, coal and atomic plants was about $100 a megawatt-hour for 2015 compared with about $200 for solar, which dropped from $500 in 2010. Those costs take into account investment, fuel, maintenance and dismantling of the installations over their lifetimes and vary widely between countries and plants. For instance, commercial rooftop solar installations generate […]

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