Category: United Kingdom

LONDON, Sept. 11 (UPI) — A shale pioneer in the United Kingdom said Thursday it was disappointed, but not surprised, by the rejection of its oil and gas exploration bid. Celtique Energie said its application to explore shale oil and natural gas reserves in the South Downs National Park in southern England was rejected. "We are disappointed by today’s decision by the South Downs National Park Authority," Geoff Davies, Chief Executive Officer of Celtique Energie, said in a statement. "However, we are not surprised, given the authority’s public stance regarding oil and gas exploration in National Parks, both in Sussex and elsewhere." The company said it believed the untapped oil and natural gas reserves thought to be present in the area would be nationally significant . The British government has endorsed shale reserves as part of a diverse energy mix. Shale campaigns in the country are in their infancy, […]

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LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) – Production has resumed at Britain’s North Sea Buzzard oilfield, the field’s operator said in a statement on Tuesday, the latest phase of the stuttering return of one of the key streams underpinning Brent oil futures. "Production has resumed following a brief outage yesterday night, Monday 8 September, and ramp-up will continue over the coming days," Calgary-based Nexen said. Nexen was bought by China’s CNOOC last year. Since returning from summer maintenance in late August the 200,000 barrel-per-day field has gone through a number of shutdowns and restarts. Buzzard is closely watched by oil traders worldwide as it is the biggest contributor to the Forties oil stream, the largest of the four benchmark crudes that are the physical supply behind international benchmark Brent crude oil futures. (Reporting by David Sheppard and Claire Milhench; editing by Keiron Henderson) WHAT DO YOU THINK?

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BP Plc (BP/) got support from the U.K. government in its U.S. court fight over the level of compensation required under a settlement of lawsuits stemming from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The U.K. told U.S. Supreme Court judges in a filing that decisions to authorize payments to people who were not injured by the spill raises “grave international comity concerns by undermining confidence in the vigorous and fair resolution of disputes.” The filing shows the government’s interest in the treatment of one of the country’s most prominent companies. BP, the second-largest British oil producer, is seeking a ruling from the U.S.’s top court after failing to persuade a Louisiana district judge and an appeals court to limit payments under a 2012 settlement to compensate victims of the spill. BP says payments are unfairly being to made to claimants whose businesses couldn’t have been affected by the […]

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PASCAGOULA, MS – JULY 1: Oil cleanup workers pick up oily globs as they remove residue washing ashore from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on July 1, 2010 in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Millions of gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf since the April 20 explosion on the drilling platform. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Britain has for the first time waded in to BP ’s legal battle over payouts for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, saying US court rulings against the energy group raise “grave international comity concerns”. In a filing to the US Supreme Court, the UK government said BP had “gone to great lengths to restore the gulf coast”, but was being forced to pay large sums to individuals and businesses who were not affected by the spill. More On this topic IN Oil & Gas It warned that the […]

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North Sea Oil and Scottish Independence: where does the truth lie? How much oil and gas is left in the North Sea? 16 billion barrels oil equivalent (boe) according to Sir Ian Wood or 24 billion boe according to Oil and Gas UK? The correct answer for official proved+probable reserves is between 8 and 9 billion boe, a figure that both DECC and Oil and Gas UK agree on. With over 9 different classes of reserves, this debate is sterile and this is not the correct question to ask. How wealthy will oil make Scotland? In 2013, the direct tax take from oil and gas production for the whole of the UK was £4.67 billion and falling. This compares with annual spending of the Scottish government (plus UK spending on Scotland) running at £65.2 billion. Hence, direct taxation of oil and gas production may account for less than 7% of the Scottish […]

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Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland. Scottish nationalist leader Alex Salmond said U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron is right to be nervous ahead of this month’s independence referendumm, as support grows for the Yes campaign. With little more than two weeks before the Sept. 18 ballot and postal voting already under way, Salmond told Sky News in an interview yesterday that the pro-independence campaign is gaining momentum and “a huge number of Labour voters are supporting Yes.” “The Yes support is rising in this campaign,” Salmond said. “We’re still the underdogs, we’ve still got a distance to travel, but if we’re making the prime minister nervous, I suspect we’re doing something right.” Polls have narrowed since Salmond’s performance on Aug. 25 in the second televised debate against Alistair Darling , the former chancellor of the exchequer who heads the anti-independence Better Together campaign. While support for […]

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A court in Manchester passed an interim measure preventing trespassing on land secured by the company for shale natural gas exploration. Francis Egan, the company’s chief executive officer, said the injunction was a victory in its controversial campaign in the country. "We hope the court’s ruling will help deter this kind of unlawful behavior in the future," he said in a statement Thursday. Cuadrilla last year witnessed rowdy demonstrations in the southern British village of Balcombe. The company’s exploratory drilling program led demonstrators to believe hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, would be next for the site. Local police last year said they were frustrated with "the criminal activities" of some of the protest groups. The British government says shale resources could ensure energy security for a country where imports will account for more than half of the country’s demands in the coming decades. Advocacy groups have expressed concern that some […]

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LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s oil industry is facing the threat of a cascade of North Sea rig closures, unless ageing platforms can urgently source more gas to help squeeze out the remaining barrels. The potential threat to oil revenues looms as Scotland prepares to vote in September’s independence referendum — a debate in which oil production forecasts have become a political football. The affected Northern North Sea (NNS) is a very mature part of the basin where producers are trapped in a vicious circleukbu of falling output, rising costs to patch up ageing platforms, and dwindling power supplies. To lift more oil from these depleted reservoirs, producers need to inject vast quantities of water — a power intensive process that requires a reliable source of energy, known as fuel gas. Some platforms are not able to generate enough of their own fuel so have to try and import the […]

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UK gas demand so far in August has been around 19% higher than last year despite a much slower rate of storage injections this month, as demand from other sectors has risen, a Platts analysis of National Grid figures showed Friday. UK gas demand so far this month has averaged around 159 million cubic meters/day — up from around 133 million cu m/d during the same period last year — as higher gas burn and exports, stronger local distribution zone (household) demand and a boost in demand from industrial units all contributed to the demand hike. This has continued the recent trend of UK gas demand being higher than in 2013, after June demand was higher than a year earlier. UK gas demand averaged 176 million cu m/d in June against the June 2013 average of 160 million cu m/d. This also confirmed the recent bucking of the trend […]

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