Lundin Petroleum said a wildcat well off Norway has come up dry. Well 10/4-1 had been drilled in PL734 around 35km from the Yme field in the southern North Sea. The exploration well, which is operated by Wintershall, had been targeting the Zeppelin prospect.
Average annual bills for British Gas customers are set to fall by £35 after the company announced a 5% cut for prices for household gas. The move, which is expected to be followed by the other “Big Six” major energy firms, will come in ahead of the winter and reflects lower costs, according to British Gas managing director Mark Hodges. It comes as National Grid warned it would have to spend more money on putting measures in place to keep the lights on this winter - adding an average extra 50p onto consumer bills - in the face of a worsening energy crunch. The closure of some power stations would have left a spare capacity of just 1.2%, and the company is paying mothballed plants to be on standby and some industries to be ready to power down if needed at times of peak demand.
The Scottish Government has given assurances that it is “not against fracking”, according to the boss of a firm which runs Scotland’s largest petrochemical plant. Jim Ratcliffe, the chief executive and chairman of Ineos, which runs the Grangemouth plant, has suggested an onshore shale gas industry could potentially be set up in Scotland within a few years, despite an indefinite moratorium on granting planning consent for fracking - the method of gas extraction. The firm has ambitions to establish a large-scale shale gas industry, having acquired fracking exploration licences across 700 square miles of central Scotland.
The UK faces a tighter energy crunch than last year, with more contingency measures needed to ensure the lights stay on, an assessment from National Grid has shown. The gap between total electricity generating capacity and peak demand would fall to just 1.2% without measures in place such as paying moth-balled power plants to be ready to come online and paying factories to be prepared to power down if needed. With those extra measures in place for times of peak demand, the capacity margin rises to 5.1%, the National Grid assessment shows. Last year’s capacity margin was 4.1% without additional provisions, which raised the breathing space to 6.1%.
Mexico may have missed the mark in opening up its energy market to foreign investors as the oil price decline continues to hit, according to a leading expert. Derek Leith, UK head of oil and gas taxation at EY, said the fall in oil price may be a deciding factor in the historic auction for 14 licences in the South American country. Mexico has made the bold move as its rebounds from a decade long decline in oil production. It is estimated there has been an overall loss in that time of around a million barrels of oil per day.
Union Jack Oil has reached an agreement with Egdon Resources to acquire a 10% interest in a licence which incorporates the Keddington oilfield in Lincolnshire. The onshore oil and gas exploration company now has a stake in licence PEDL005 which also incorporates the Louth prospect and the North Somercotes prospect. Union Jack will not have to pay any cash up-front but under the terms of the agreement will pay 20% of the costs of the proposed new Keddington appraisal well scheduled to be drilled later in the year.
The eagerly awaited Energy Bill was published on Friday, setting out the proposed new statutory powers anticipated by the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) Framework Document published in April of this year. The Bill sets out the details of the tools that the OGA will use to implement the MER UK Strategy, working in conjunction with other governmental departments and the oil and gas industry. Undoubtedly it is the new powers to be conferred on the OGA – rather than simply the transfer of existing powers from the Secretary of State – that will be of particular interest to those in the sector.
Jacobs Engineering Group has strengthened its senior team after picking a new chief executive. The company has named Steven Demetriou as head of the company, and he will also be elected to the board. He brings more than 30 years’ experience in global business leadership and most recently served as chief executive of Aleris Corporation.
Disputes over attempts to probe Tehran’s alleged work on nuclear weapons are unexpectedly persisting, threatening plans to wrap up an Iran nuclear deal. Diplomats say at least two other issues still need final agreement. These are Iranian demands that a UN arms embargo be lifted and any UN Security Council resolution approving the deal no longer describes Iran’s nuclear activities as illegal. With few signs that Iranian or US negotiators are prepared to give ground, the high-stakes game of brinksmanship looks set to force a fourth extension of talks since the current round began 17 days ago.
Welcome to Japan, land of cherry blossoms, sushi and sake, and 17,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste. That’s what the country has in temporary storage from its nuclear plants. Supporters of atomic power say it’s cleaner than fossil fuels for generating electricity. Detractors say there’s nothing clean about what’s left behind, some of which remains a deadly environmental toxin for thousands of years. Since atomic power was first harnessed more than 70 years ago, the industry has been trying to solve the problem of safe disposal of the waste. Japan has been thrown into the center of the conundrum by its decision in recent months to retire five reactors after the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
This time-lapse footage shows the second module of the Gina Krog living quarter being lifted into place. It was built by Aluship in Poland and was placed onto the first module, which was built at Apply Leirvik in Norway.
Oceaneering International has made a new appointment to its senior team. The company has named Steve Barrett as senior vice president with global responsibility for its Subsea Products segment. Rod Larson, president and chief operating officer, said: “Steve's leadership and successful track record in subsea products will add depth and capabilities to our management team.
An emergency summit convened in the wake of Westminster’s decision to scrap a subsidy scheme for onshore wind farms was attended by more than 200 people, the Scottish Government said. Energy Minister Fergus Ewing organised the talks after the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced it would end payments under the Renewables Obligation a year early. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and others in the Scottish Government have already spoken out against the decision, which industry leaders Scottish Renewables fears could put up to £3 billion of investment in Scotland at risk.
Statoil has installed the steel jacket for the Gina Krog platform in the Norwegian part of the North Sea. This stunning footage shows the jacket, which weighs more than 17,000 tonnes. Weighing more than twice the steel weight of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it has now been secured into the seabed.
Onshore wind capacity in Serbia is expected to surge by 2025, boosted by a number of new projects in the country. The total onshore wind installed capacity will increase from just 20 (MW) Megawatts last year, to an estimated 542MW in the next 10 years. Serbia’s wind capacity has been boosted in the past three years by a number of new projects.
Negotiations by SEPLAT Petroleum Development to acquire an asset in Nigeria which faced delays has finally restarted. The company said it had reached an agreement to release funds from an account which had been set up with a consortium in a bid to make a potential acquisition. It had been created to look for opportunities to buy assets from oil and gas companies operating in the region. In the latest agreement, SEPLAT has said it will release $408million of the total $453million which is being held in the account.
A report from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) has found oil prices have rebounded more than expected, after falling by more than half a year ago. The findings were revealed in the latest World Economic Outlook which said the rise in the price of oil reflected higher demand and expectations that oil production growth in the US would slow faster than previously forecast. It predicted the average price of oil to be $59 per barrel over the year.
Ophir Energy has awarded two contractor consortia contracts for its Fortuna FLNG project in Equatorial Guinea. The agreements, for Upstream Front End Engineering and Design (FEED), were given to McDermott Marine Construction and GE Oil & Gas and Subsea 7 and Aker Solutions. The move comes in the same week the company revealed it would be reduce its headcount and closing offices in a $60million savings bid.
LGO has made further progress on its Cedros Peninsula interests in Trinidad after striking a further deal with Beach Oilfield Limited. The company had previously agreed to acquire all of BOLT’s interests in oil and gas leases, with rights to deep targets below 7,000 feet. LGO said its title to 100% owned Cedros leases have now been accepted by the Ministry of Energy and Energy Affairs.
Oil trader Michael Prest faces four weeks in jail unless he pays the 360,200 pounds ($556,100) of alimony and child support he owes his ex-wife by September 28. Prest, who has been battling divorce proceedings since 2008, was given the ultimatum in a decision by a three-judge panel at London’s Court of Appeal on Tuesday. While they refused him permission to appeal to the UK’s Supreme Court, his lawyers said they’d make a direct application -- a step that would delay incarceration. Yasmin Prest won a landmark ruling at the top court in June 2013 giving her the right to force offshore companies owned by her former husband to turn over assets as part of a 17.5 million-pound divorce award.
With continued signs that investment in the UKCS is falling rapidly, it is vital the scope of the Investment Allowance, announced in the March Budget, encourages all forms of productive investment if it is to provide the strongest engine for growth. We are pleased to note the Government has taken steps to extend this allowance as they previously proposed and eagerly anticipate the required legislation by the end of the summer. In addition, the announced two per cent cut in corporation tax over the next five years, will support companies throughout the sector’s supply chain and help its competitiveness.
A tax expert said North Sea workers are unlikely to be affected to changes implemented to “non-dom” statuses in the UK. The Chancellor George Osborne has revealed the first Conservative budget in almost two decades to MPs with a pledge to press ahead with tax reforms for the industry. He told politicians non-dom status would be abolished for people born in the UK to parents domiciled here.
The first all-Tory Budget in almost two decades is set to be divisive as further dramatic welfare curbs are included with Chancellor George Osborne promising to "secure Britain's future". The Budget is also set to take advantage of better-than-forecast tax revenue to declare that £12billion of welfare savings will be implemented more slowly than previously thought.
The Baker Hughes rig count was up slightly overall from the previous month, despite both the international and US count remaining slightly down. The worldwide rig count for June 2015 was 2,136 – up nine from the 2,127 counted in May and down 1,309 from the 3,445 counted in June 2014. However company ranked the numbers on the international rig count at 1,146 – down 12 from the 1,158 the month previously.