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U.S. crude stockpiles fall 4.2 million barrels in latest week: EIA

U.S. crude stocks declined far more than expected last week, while gasoline stocks decreased and distillate inventories rose, data from the Energy Information Administration showed on Wednesday. Crude inventories fell by 4.2 million barrels in the last week, more than twenty times analysts’ expectations for an decrease of 184,000 barrels. Crude stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub fell by 212,000 barrels, EIA said. Refinery crude runs fell by 108,000 barrels per day, EIA data showed. Refinery utilization rates fell by 0.4 percentage points. Gasoline stocks fell by 363,000 barrels, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a 512,000 barrels gain. Distillate stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil, rose by 2.6 million barrels, versus expectations for a 1.5 million barrels increase, the EIA data showed. U.S. crude imports fell last week by 396,000 barrels per day. (Reporting By Jessica Resnick-Ault)

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Chevron to lay off 1,500 workers amidst oil price slump

A Chevron gas station sign is seen in Del Mar, California, April 25, 2013. Chevron Corp, the second-largest U.S. oil company, said on Tuesday it would lay off 1,500 employees, about 2 percent of its global work force, as it trims costs to offset declining crude prices. Nearly all of the layoffs will be in Texas, where the company has expanded in recent years to develop land in the Permian shale formation, and California, where Chevron is headquartered. Fifty international employees will be laid off and roughly 600 contractor positions will be canceled, the company said in a statement. Of the 1,500 jobs being eliminated, 270 are currently empty and will not be filled, Chevron said. Chevron had previously labeled the Permian as one of its premium assets. Oil prices have plunged by about 55 percent in the past year due to oversupply concerns both in the United States […]

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2 injection wells shut down, 1 curbing activity after quakes

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Oklahoma Corporation Commission says two oil and gas wastewater injection wells are shutting down and one is reducing operations in the Crescent area following several earthquakes. The commission said Tuesday that Stephens Production and Devon Energy are each voluntarily closing one well. Also, Stephens is reducing operations at another well by 50 percent. Earthquakes in the area recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey on Monday and Tuesday include two of magnitude 4.5 and one of magnitude 4.1. The commission recently announced plans to place more than 200 disposal wells under scrutiny as it investigates whether they are triggering earthquakes in the state. An Oklahoma Geological Survey report in April says it’s "very likely" most of the state’s recent earthquakes were triggered by the injection of wastewater from the wells.

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Deep-sea oil projects make up most of $200 billion deferrals: Wood Mac

A vessel delivers a cargo of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to the Arun regasification terminal in Lhokseumawe, North Aceh June 25, 2015 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Picture taken June 25, 2015. Oil and gas projects in deep basins account for most of deferred investments worth more than $200 billion made due to the oil price crash, analysts at consultancy Wood Mackenzie said in a report. Oil and gas majors have slashed capital expenditure budgets between 10-15 percent this year in response to oil prices halving over the past year. A large chunk of these cost savings have been made by deferring investment decisions in expensive projects, shelving more than $200 billion worth of investments, the analysts said. Estimates by rival consultancies have varied between $150-$200 billion. "By year-end we may be able to count the number of major upstream projects that made FID (final investment decision)during […]

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Exxon Mobil donates $5 million to North Dakota housing fund

A Exxon Mobil gas station is seen in Encinitas, California October 28, 2014. A subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corp donated $5 million on Monday to a North Dakota government housing fund that subsidizes construction of low-cost apartments for teachers and emergency personnel in the state’s oil patch. XTO Energy will receive a 100 percent tax write-off for its donation to the North Dakota Housing Incentive Fund, which will be used to construct more than 75 apartment units in Kildeer, Watford City and Williston, towns at the center of the state’s oil hub. North Dakota has had a hard time attracting teachers, police officers and firefighters into such towns due to the high cost of housing. The fund seeks to help alleviate that. "These are the communities our employees live in and we want to respect those communities," Tim McIlwain, XTO’s head of operations, told a news conference. The donation […]

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North Dakota crude breakeven prices as low as $24/b: state agency

US crude prices would still need to drop significantly before falling below breakeven prices in North Dakota’s four most prolific counties, according to data released by the state Department of Mineral Resources Monday. Breakeven prices for rigs in North Dakota’s Dunn, McKenzie, Mountrail and Williams counties range from $24/b in Dunn to $41/b in Mountrail, according to the data. Those four counties accounted for 63 of the state’s 68 oil rigs on Monday, according to the data. The breakeven prices ranged from $28/b to $42/b in the four counties when the DMR published its last such data in October 2014. At the same time, breakeven prices have fallen dramatically in counties with far less drilling activity, the data shows. The breakeven price is $62/b in Divide County, which has three working rigs. Previously, the breakeven price in Divide was seen to be $85/b, when the county had eight working […]

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Philadelphia Energy Solutions seeks to buy Bakken logistics assets

The Philadelphia Energy Solutions oil refinery owned by The Carlyle Group is seen at sunset in Philadelphia March 26, 2014. Philadelphia Energy Solutions is pursuing a joint venture that would give the U.S. East Coast refiner greater control over its supply chain out of North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields, the company has disclosed in federal filings ahead of a initial public offering. PES, a joint venture partly owned by Carlyle Group LP, said in a filing that in early June, it entered into a preliminary agreement with Globe Resources Group, parent company of BOE Midstream. The deal would give PES controlling interest in a 210,000 barrel-per-day crude rail loading facility, nearly 1 million barrels of crude oil storage and a 39-mile pipeline in North Dakota. The Bakken rail terminal will serve the 335,000 bpd PES refinery complex in Philadelphia, the largest consumer of Bakken oil in the country. The […]

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Sudden Drop in Crude-Oil Prices Roils U.S. Energy Firms’ Rebound

U.S. energy companies are planning more layoffs, asset sales and financial maneuvers to deal with a recent, sudden drop in U.S. crude-oil prices to under $50 a barrel, the lowest level in four months. The companies had been banking on a rebound in oil prices in the second half of 2015 after falling sharply late last year. Prices began to regain ground in the spring, rising so quickly that some American producers started hiring back drilling rigs to pump more crude. That speedy return to the oil patch and the threat of new Iranian oil production have pushed down prices more than 20% over the past six weeks to $48.14 as of Friday , bringing storm clouds back to the energy patch. Oil-field services providers that help drill wells have quietly revealed job cuts that were deeper than initially announced, and warned of more layoffs to come. Halliburton Co. […]

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This Is Why A Serious Decline In U.S Shale Plays Is Not Far Away

The plunge in oil prices last year led many to say that a decline in U.S. oil production wouldn’t be far behind. This was because almost all the growth in U.S. production in recent years had come from high-cost tight oil deposits which could not be profitable at these new lower oil prices. These wells were also known to have production declines that averaged 40 percent per year. Overall U.S. production, however, confounded the conventional logic and continued to rise– until early June when it stalled and then dropped slightly. Anyone who understood that U.S. drillers in shale plays had large inventories of drilled, but not yet completed wells, knew that production would probably rise for some time into 2015– even as the number of rigs operating plummeted. Shale drillers who are in debt–and most of the independents are heavily in debt–simply must get some revenue out of wells […]

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U.S. oil drillers add rigs despite crude price collapse: Baker Hughes

A service truck drives past an oil well on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, November 1, 2014. U.S. oil producers added 21 oil rigs in the past week, the most in over a year, data showed on Friday, suggesting that drillers were moving more aggressively than expected, just before crude prices’ latest dive down. Oil producers, who cut rigs in the face of falling prices late last year, began to add rigs back in the week ending July 2, oil services company Baker Hughes Inc said in its closely followed report. The latest addition comes amid a 21 percent collapse in U.S. crude prices from a recent high in June, data showed on Friday. The rise in the rig count this week was the biggest increase since April 2014. It was, however, only the third addition over the past 33 weeks, bringing the total rig count […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple