Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality’s Petroleum Pipeline Task Force issued a report that recommended that heavy crude and oil sands be kept out of an Enbridge Inc. pipeline that crosses Continue Reading
More Oilfield Layoffs Savage Services Corp, a North Dakota railcar and logistics facility, laid off 10% of its full time employees this week. Savage is one of the largest facilities of its kind in the region and employed 118 people before this layoff. Company sources blame the layoffs on decreased demand for railcars to transport Bakken crude oil, saying that as pipeline construction has increased, the demand for railcars is the lowest it has been in three years. This is contrary to other data about the prevalence of transporting crude oil by rail. In May, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its latest data for crude by rail across the country that shows a 1700% increase over the last five years. It has been almost two years since Savage announced the expansion of the Bakken Petroleum Services Hub in Trenton, ND as a result of its acquisition of Ft. […]
Amazon subsidiary looks to wind power to meet energy needs of cloud-based subsidiary in North Carolina. File Photo by UPI/Pat Benic SEATTLE, July 15 (UPI) — The first utility-scale wind farm in North Carolina is part of a broader effort to reduce the carbon footprint, an arm of online retailer Amazon announced. The technology infrastructure division of the retailer, Amazon Web Services, announced it contracted Iberdrola Renewables to help build and operate a 208 megawatt wind farm in North Carolina . Dubbed Amazon Wind Farm U.S. East, the facility will generate about 670,000 megawatt hours of electricity and be the state’s first utility-scale wind farm once up and running by December 2016. The Amazon subsidiary in November committed to getting 100 percent of its electricity needs from renewable resources, with the aim of meeting 40 percent of that goal by the end of 2016. Jerry Hunter, a vice president […]
A worker tends to an oil boom on the Kalamazoo River near Battle Creek, Mich., in 2010. Pipeline operator Enbridge has been called on to stop sending heavier crude oil grades through a Michigan pipeline network. File Photo by Brian Kersey/UPI LANSING, Mich., July 15 (UPI) — A pipeline report from Michigan calls for a ban on the transportation of heavier crude oil grades through pipelines running through the Straits of Mackinac. "While we recognize the importance of transporting energy to power Michigan communities, it cannot be at the expense of our environment," Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Director Dan Wyant said in a statement. Wyant and Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette released a report from a pipeline task force, which calls for "an immediate" ban on sending tar sands and heavy crude through Enbridge pipeline Line 5b running through the straits. Wyant and Schuette announced last year they’d […]
Summary The media continues to report that the world is greatly oversupplied with oil and this continues to have a negative effect on oil prices. The EIA and IEA both appear to be underestimating worldwide demand for oil by nearly 2 million barrels per day. The EIA lacks reliable production figures for any state except for Alaska. The figure that the EIA adds to actual crude oil stocks before reporting has increased greatly in recent weeks. The oil price decline has led to cutbacks in capital spending, which is likely to exacerbate an oil supply shortage going forward. For quite some time now, the media has been discussing the oil supply glut that has been blamed for pushing down the price of oil from its previous peak in the middle of last year. However, there is now an increasing amount of evidence that the extent of the supply glut […]
In West Texas, the king of the U.S. oilfields is proving to be the safest investment for explorers. The Permian Basin added the most drilling rigs of the four major U.S. oil plays last week. Output from the region, which stretches into southeastern New Mexico, will rise by 5,000 barrels a day in August, the Energy Information Administration estimates. The Eagle Ford in south Texas, the Bakken region of North Dakota and the Niobrara of Colorado and Wyoming will all drop by at least 20,000 barrels. WPX Energy Inc. entered the region with Tuesday’s $2.35 billion deal to buy RKI Exploration & Production LLC. WPX and other explorers are turning to the Permian to drill into the large number of oil-soaked underground rock deposits stacked like pancakes. “What the Permian shows is the opportunity, and the opportunity is driven by the stacked reservoirs,” Rick Muncrief, chief executive officer at […]
Sabine Oil & Gas Corp., the Houston-based exploration and production company that merged with Forest Oil Corp. last year, filed for bankruptcy amid falling oil prices. Sabine had about $2.5 billion in assets and about $2.9 billion in liabilities as of May 31, according to Chapter 11 filings in bankruptcy court in New York. The company continues to discuss a consensual financial restructuring plan with lenders and debt holders, it said in a statement. Sabine has sold assets, cut expenses for drilling and new wells and froze wages to cope with a sharp decline in energy prices, according to court filings. “Given the severity of the current market conditions and their impact on the company’s cash flow situation, the company has been unable to right-size its balance sheet through cost-cutting and self-help measures alone,” Chief Financial Officer Michael Magilton said. The case is in re Sabine Oil & Gas […]
A promotional sign adorns a stage at a BHP Billiton function in central Sydney August 20, 2013. BHP Billiton on Wednesday said it will take a $2 billion impairment on its U.S. shale operations – the third writedown in three years. The charge on fiscal 2015 financial results, pushed BHP’s Australian shares to their biggest fall in a week — down 1.7 percent to $26.64. The gas-focused Hawkville field in Texas accounts for the substantial majority of the charge to be included in results for the fiscal year that ended on June 30, which BHP estimates will be around $2.8 billion on a pre-tax basis. BHP announced a $328 million write-down on the Permian field in February and a $2.84 billion impairment on the gas component of the shale division in 2012. The latest charge comes as BHP, the world’s biggest diversified mining company, faces a sharp fall in […]
(Bloomberg) — After four years of record supply, America’s natural gas output is showing signs of weakness as producers retreat amid tumbling oil prices. Gas production from the seven largest U.S. shale basins will fall 0.6 percent to 45.1 billion cubic feet a day in August from a month earlier, the biggest drop since March 2014, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said Monday in its monthly Drilling Productivity report. EIA estimates have shown supply declines since June. The government’s forecasts signal the collapse in crude oil prices, which have plunged by about half over the past year, is reverberating in the natural gas market. As drillers shut wells in liquids-rich deposits from North Dakota to Texas, they’re also curtailing gas output from those reservoirs. That may prevent further price declines for gas, which has slid almost a third over the same period. “Gas is being held captive by oil,” […]
CALGARY, Alberta, July 14 (Reuters) – Suncor Energy Inc has launched a pilot project to replace the high-pressure steam used to extract bitumen from oil sands with radio frequency technology developed by U.S. defence contractor Harris Corporation. Canada’s largest oil and gas company, which produces 440,000 barrels per day from Alberta’s oil sands, said on Tuesday that the technology could significantly reduce costs, greenhouse gas emissions and water usage. Alberta’s oil sands are the world’s third-largest crude reserves after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and a leading source of U.S. crude imports. However, breakeven costs for new projects are some of the highest globally. And the carbon-intensive process of using steam to liquefy the tar-like bitumen trapped in the sand has attracted fierce opposition from environmental groups. "Anytime you can develop a resource that is more environmentally benign and economically advantageous is going to be a strategic advantage. I would […]
