A stubborn 16-month crude rout with no end in sight is driving the largest US oil producers away from costly, high-risk mega-projects long touted as the industry’s future and toward safer shale operations that generate the cash needed to satisfy anxious investors.
ConocoPhillips said the company will stop searching for oil and gas in deepwater fields by 2017 as well as selling offshore leases it doesn’t intend to drill. The company said the move will help free up $800million in capital, the same amount which has been estimated for exploration next year. Earlier this week Conoco revealed its capital budget for the year would be cut to $10.2billion, in response to continued low oil prices.
The boss of ConocoPhillips, Ryan Lance, has been confirmed as a speaker at ONS 2016, which takes place in Stavanger between August 29-September 1.
Canadian energy companies have cut thousands of jobs and scrapped projects in a drive to cut costs. Now they’re raiding workers’ perks.
Total and ConocoPhillips have begun production from the Surmont 2 oil sands project in Alberta, Canada.
ConocoPhillips could be set to make headcount reductions to its North Sea operations. The company announced last month that it had already reduced staffing numbers by 1,000 positions since the decline in oil price. The amount equates 5% of its global workforce across its operations.
U.S. oil and gas company ConocoPhillips is reviewing its portfolio in Indonesia and may soon seek buyers for a stake in a production sharing block it operates in the Natuna Sea, company and government sources said. The company has proposed to upstream oil and gas regulator SKKMigas to open its data room for the South Natuna Sea Block B, the agency's spokesman Elan Biantoro told Reuters, noting that such requests were usually made by companies "that want to farm out their participating interests." ConocoPhillips was opening the data room to offer its share to other investors, spokesman Joang Laksanto said.
Chevron North Sea is currently in talks about offloading its 50% share in Britannia Operator Ltd. A spokesman from the firm confirmed the oil major is having discussions with joint venture partner ConocoPhillips about transferring its half in the business. The move wouldn’t affect its stake in the Britannia field.
US independent Whiting Petroleum has appointed Carin Knickel to its board.
Maersk Drilling has been awarded a $14 million 16-month contract extension for the jackup rig Mærsk Innovator with ConocoPhillips Norway.
ConocoPhillips ended talks with China National Petroleum Corp. on a shale gas development in the country after a two-year study. “The right commercial decision was to halt further discussions on this block,” ConocoPhillips’s China unit said in an e-mail response to questions Wednesday. The company said it made the decision “some time ago.”
BP’s £4.5billion North Sea Clair Ridge project, which is expected to keep the UK producing oil beyond 2050, has taken a giant leap forward. Three huge topside modules have been installed on the “quarters and utilities” (QU) platform following their long journey from a shipyard in South Korea. They were safely lifted onto pre-installed jackets by the Heerema Thialf deepwater construction vessel.
Cost-cutting in Britain's North Sea oil and gas sector could lead to more acute skills shortages in future, industry experts have warned, with some expressing concerns that safety could be compromised. A plunge in crude prices over the last 12 months has prompted oil majors such as Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips to lay off hundreds of workers. Oil field services groups such as Amec Foster Wheeler, Wood Group and Petrofac are also in consultation with employees over job cuts.
ConocoPhillips has reported a quarterly loss of $39milion in its fourth quarter results last year, compared to a profit of $2.5billion in the same period of 2013. The company has cut its expenditure for 2015 following a trend set by a number of other oil majors such as BP. Last year, ConocoPhillips announced plans to cut spending by 20%, saying it expected to spend $13.5billion.
Oil and gas giant ConocoPhillips confirmed it will cut up to 230 jobs in its North Sea operations after completing a review of its business. The Houston-based firm, which is poised to take over as the biggest oil producer in the North Sea in terms of production volume by the end of this year, said staff numbers in the UK would be cut from 1,649 staff and contractors to 1,419 my March of next year. The cuts will fall predominantly on Aberdeen where the firm employs around 1,100, including 700 permanent staff and 400 contractors.
Oil major ConocoPhillips has cut its capital budget for 2015 by 20%, the company said. The reduction, to a CAPEX of $13.5billion, has been influenced by relatively lower spending on major projects as well as the deferral of spending on US shale. Ryan Lance, chief executive, said: "We are setting our 2015 capital budget at a level that we believe is prudent given the current environment.
US firm ConocoPhillips has become the latest oil major to warn of job losses in the UK North Sea, although it refused to say how many or where exactly the axe is likely to fall. ConocoPhillips, which is poised to take over as the biggest oil producer in the region in terms of production volume by the end of this year, told the Press and Journal it had recently launched a review of its UK business. It added: “Like other operators in the North Sea, we are focused on improving the operating efficiency and production outlook for our business. “We have now started a consultation process with staff relating to organisational restructuring to establish a model to drive our UK business forward in an efficient and sustainable manner. “We do anticipate some redundancies but at this stage the actual number has not yet been defined.” ConocoPhillips is the world’s largest oil and gas exploration and production company. It currently employs about 1,000 people directly and a further 600 contract workers in the UK. A spokeswoman for the firm said the totals included about 700 staff and 400 contractors working out of Aberdeen. The group’s Granite City-based UK business either operates or has stakes in assets including the Britannia field and its satellites, Judy/Joanne, Jade, Jasmine, CMS, Galleon, LOGGS, Saturn Unit, V-Fields, Victor, Viking, Calder, Darwen, Crossens, Asland, Millom, Dalton, Clair, MacCulloch and Nicol. Onshore, the company has interests in the Rivers terminal at Barrow-in-Furness, the Teesside oil terminal at Seal Sands, Middlesbrough, and Theddlethorpe gas plant in Lincolnshire. Its job cutting comes hot on the heels of BP launching a cost reduction exercise in the North Sea in line with rivals such as Shell and Chevron which have axed hundreds of roles as low oil prices and high overheads take their toll. BP has declined to reveal the likely impact of its review on its 4,000-strong North Sea workforce.