Endeavour International Corp., a US-based oil and gas exploration firm with operations in the North Sea, sought bankruptcy protection yesterday, saying it has a restructuring agreement with some creditors.
Renewable energy will satisfy much of Africa’s expanding power needs by 2040 as the continent unlocks vast hydropower resources, the International Energy Agency said. Energy demand south of the Sahara Desert will grow 80% as the economy quadruples in size during the period, the Paris-based institution said in a report released today. Renewable energy and hydropower will supply almost half of the growth.
Iraq will sell its Basrah Light crude to Asia at the biggest discount since January 2009 as it follows Saudi Arabia and Iran in cutting prices amid a slump in Brent futures to the lowest in almost four years.
Fifty years since acquiring its first North Sea license, BP is preparing to start a £700million ($1.1billion) project in the region that’s expected to produce oil and gas into the next decade.
US and European Union moves to pressure Russia by threatening its oil output overlook one detail: a mass of conventional resources across Siberia, according to Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoi. Russia will distribute more oil and gas deposits found in traditional areas during the Soviet era, dulling the sting of US and EU sanctions that aim to keep new provinces locked in layers of shale or under Arctic waters, according to Donskoi.
Poland’s ambition to achieve energy independence from Russia is being undermined by drillers giving up on the nation’s shale wells after disappointing results. The highest test flows during the country’s five-year search for unconventional gas were just 30 percent of what’s needed for commercial production, said Pawel Poprawa, a geologist at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow. The number of active shale permits has fallen 43 percent from a high in January 2013 and explorers probably won’t extend all those expiring this year, according to Slawomir Brodzinski, the nation’s deputy environment minister. 3Legs Resources Plc, the Isle of Man-based company that was the first foreign explorer to buy a license in the East European nation, said last month it’s leaving after poor results at Poland’s biggest fracking operation in the northeastern Baltic Basin. The “poorly understood” formation may hold more gas than Texas’s Barnett Shale, where commercial output from 2000 helped turn the U.S. into the world’s largest gas producer, according to the U.S. Energy Department.
Lee Tillman, chief executive officer of Marathon Oil told investors last month that the company was sitting on the equivalent of 4.3 billion barrels in its US shale acreage. That number was 5.5 times higher than the one Marathon reported to federal regulators. Such discrepancies are rife in the US shale industry. Drillers use bigger forecasts to sell the hydraulic fracturing boom to investors and to persuade lawmakers to lift the 39-year-old ban on crude exports. Sixty-two of 73 US shale drillers reported one estimate in mandatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission while citing higher potential figures to the public, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Pioneer Natural Resources' estimate was 13 times higher. Goodrich Petroleum's was 19 times. For Rice Energy it was almost 27-fold.
Russian investigators are seeking 190billion rubles ($4.75billion) from arrested businessman Vladimir Evtushenkov’s AFK Sistema and an affiliated unit for “illegal” gains relating to oil producer OAO Bashneft.
Pirates released a Vietnamese oil tanker and its 18 crew members yesterday after siphoning part of its diesel cargo, according to the coast guard.
Norway unveiled plans to spend a record amount of its oil revenue to cover budget needs as the government said it will explore ways to cap future expenditure.
The U.S. shale boom is producing record amounts of new oil as demand weakens, pushing prices down toward levels that threaten to reduce future drilling. Domestic fields will add an unprecedented 1.1 million barrels a day of output this year and another 963,000 in 2015, raising production to the most since 1970, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The Energy Department’s statistical arm forecasts consumption will shrink 0.2 percent to 18.9 million barrels a day this year, the lowest since 2012.
With the sunniest desert on Earth, a windswept coast and limited fossil fuel supplies, northern Chile has become the world’s top market for renewable energy. The government of President Michelle Bachelet has approved 76 solar and wind projects since taking power March 11. Renewable energy developers are pursuing contracts to deliver electricity to mines run by by companies including Anglo American Plc (AAL) and BHP Billiton Ltd (BHP), which consume a third of the country’s power.
BP Plc asked a U.S. appeals court to undo payments to some victims of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill in a move opposing lawyers said might open the floodgates to hundreds of thousands of individual damage-claim awards.
Russia’s wheels of power are grinding to a halt.
Crude oil is poised to extend the biggest slump in more than two years after Saudi Arabia signaled it’s ready for a price war with other OPEC members, according to Commerzbank AG and Citigroup Inc. Saudi Aramco, the state-run oil producer of the world’s biggest exporter, cut prices on Oct. 1 for all its exports, reducing those for Asia to the lowest level since 2008.
Brent crude traded on the brink of a bear market on speculation that Saudi Arabia will maintain output even as supplies from the US and Russia increase and demand slows.
One of Russia’s prized oils, facing increased competition in Asia, is traveling to a rather unlikely destination: the US West Coast. As the US threatens President Vladimir Putin with further economic sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine, light Sokol oil from Russia’s Far East is showing up in California for the first time in six years. Tankers have been carrying the crude to western states from Korea since May as Asia cherry-picks supplies from a growing pool of sources, including West Africa and Latin America, shipping data compiled by Bloomberg show.
BP Plc asked the US judge in charge of thousands of oil-spill damage lawsuits to review a ruling that exposes the company to as much as $18billion in fines, saying it was based on evidence he said he wouldn’t consider.
United Arab Emirates (UAE) Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei said he hopes BP, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SA have “a good chance to compete” for concessions in the nation’s biggest onshore deposits of crude oil. The three companies, together with Exxon Mobil Corp and Portugal’s Partex Oil & Gas, were partners with Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s largest emirate, in a joint-venture agreement that expired in January.
Russian oil output rose to near a post-Soviet record last month, a sign the biggest source of revenue for President Vladimir Putin’s government has yet to be eroded by US and European sanctions.
Europe shouldn’t fear the economic fallout of deteriorating ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg said.
Petroleo Brasileiro SA contracts at the center of a criminal investigation that has former executive Paulo Roberto Costa awaiting trial show that another top manager had negotiated and recommended board approval of the allegedly over-billed deals.
Baker Hughes Inc. is now disclosing all of the chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process used in oil and gas production while keeping trade secrets secret, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
German groups campaigning against hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas handed a petition of 660,000 signatures to Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks seeking to outlaw use of the technology. “There are no good reasons for fracking but large risks for the environment and people’s health,” Ann-Kathrin Schneider of environmental group BUND said today in a statement as the petition was passed to Hendricks in Berlin. Campaigners are seeking changes to the federal mining law.
The US natural gas boom is poised to go global as the government approves projects that will export the fuel to buyers from Tokyo to New Delhi. Dominion Resources Inc.’s Cove Point terminal in Maryland won authorization Sept. 29 from the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to ship liquefied natural gas around the world. It’s the fourth export project to win permission and the first outside the Gulf of Mexico. Construction will cost between $3.4billion and $3.8billion, Dominion said yesterday.
