Oil companies that have pumped trillions of barrels of crude from the ground are now saying the future is in their other main product: natural gas, a fuel they’re promoting as the logical successor to coal.
With almost 200 nations set to hammer out a binding pact on carbon emissions in December, fossil-fuel companies led by Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SA say they’re refocusing on gas as a cleaner alternative to the cheap coal that now dominates electricity generation worldwide.
That’s sparked a war of words between the two industries and raised concern that Big Oil is more interested in grabbing market share then fighting global warming.
In the week before the general election on May 8, a “weel kent” and highly respected financial newspaper reported that our friends in Norway have earned more in the last quarter from their “oil fund” than the Norwegian government had actually spent.
By any measure this is an astounding achievement and is testament to the Norwegian’s intelligent and strategic decision to set up the fund in the first place.
Interestingly though, this event wasn’t to my knowledge reported elsewhere in the media and it certainly didn’t make it on to the mainstream television news.
Perhaps though, that’s not surprising because, of course, although it may not be repeatable every quarter, it would have reflected very badly on all those unionist politicians who have worked so hard over the past few decades to deny Scotland the financial security that Norway has now so brilliantly achieved.
A new oil and gas service business has launched in Aberdeen, creating 16 jobs.
Initially based in Tullos, Aberdeen, EnerQuip plans to move to a larger facility in the north-east in early 2016 to support anticipated growth.
It has been formed by three former senior bosses of Granite City-based AMC Engineering – Andrew Polson, Dave Clark and John Duncan – who together have more than 50 years’ oil and gas experience.
A record number of companies are taking part in the latest Scottish trade mission to the Oil and Gas Asia (OGA) industry showcase in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The Scottish Enterprise (SE)-led delegation at the event, being held from today until Thursday, has 15 firms on board.
As you might expect, there is a strong presence from the north-east as businesses in the energy sector look to expand overseas.
A worker has been injured following a light hydrocarbon release at oil major Shell's refinery in Ontario, Canada.
According to reports, the worker sustained burns and was in a stable condition.
The incident comes after the family of a worker killed in an explosion were given an estimated $5million as part of a settlement deal.
Nigeria’s Red Cross says a runaway oil tanker truck exploded in a crowded bus station in the south of the country, igniting 11 other vehicles and burning 69 people to death.
Red Cross chairman Peter Emeka Kathy said Monday that about 30 other victims have been taken to hospital with severe burns.
Apache has revealed plans to reorganise its business as it looks to reduce costs.
Cory Loegering has been named as the new head of Apache North Sea, taking over from Jim House who has been given a newly created position.
House will become senior vice president for the Houston region and will be based at the company's headquarters Houston.
While the UK’s offshore industry is indeed facing pressure there is huge remaining potential – with up to 23billion barrels of oil & gas still to play for.
Tax reforms announced in the Government's 2015 Budget and the setting up of the new regulator, the Oil & Gas Authority, provide strong foundations for the regeneration of the North Sea. The onus is now on industry to align around a common purpose and work together to build a more sustainable future through safe cost and efficiency improvements.
North Sea oil & gas is a hugely valuable industry and a prize worth fighting for; supporting 450,000 jobs; paying billions of pounds to Treasury each year; fostering advanced technology; and meeting half of Britain’s oil & gas needs.
Norwegian explorer Statoil has agreed a long-term gas supply agreement with the UK's SSE.
The deal, which will start from October, will see gas supplied increase from ca. 0.5 billion standard cubic metres per day to ca. 2.5 bcm/y.
Tor Martin Anfinnsen, senior vice president of Marketing and Trading in Statoil, said: “We are very happy to have made this agreement with SSE. Being the second largest supplier of gas and electricity in the UK, SSE is a significant player in a market that is very important to Statoil.
I’m thinking that this commentary could end up irritating some of the UK offshore industry’s leadership. If that is the case then so be it; but there’s a lot about the North Sea oil & gas industry that’s worrying one helluva lot of people whose lives hinge on its health.
Some 5,000 jobs gone, it is said; thousands more to go, it is said too.
My first concern . . . beef if you like . . . concerns just how much of the UKCS production capacity is rendered non-viable by basement oil prices.
And the reason is that I seem to be hearing different numbers from different people, all of whom appear to claim to quote Oil & Gas UK’s latest dataset, viz the 2015 Activity Survey.
Despite the intense negativity that currently grips the UK North Sea, international marine & offshore engineering consultancy Aqualis Offshore has decided to open for business in Aberdeen.
“We know that job cuts currently is a common theme in the oil industry, but we are taking a long-term approach,” the Norwegian firm’s CEO David Wells told Energy.
“Entering Aberdeen was the obvious next step of our expansion strategy. The city is the oil & gas centre of the UK and packed with oil companies, rig operators and oil services players who constantly need support from senior engineers and mariners for challenging offshore projects and integrity problems. That is exactly what we offer.”
The Aberdeen office is located in Grandholm Village, which is on the site of the famous Grandholm Mill.
It is led by general manager Martin Brown, a chartered naval architect with 25 years’ experience from offshore projects on the UKCS and elsewhere around the world. He has worked as a consultant for many years, lately for Noble Denton.
The UK’s Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) has chosen a consortium led by north-east consultancy Pale Blue Dot Energy to identify future potential carbon dioxide (CO2) storage sites beneath the North Sea.
The 12-month project is being delivered by the ETI and funded with up to £2.5million from the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The aim is to identify five credible carbon capture and storage sites on the UK Continental Shelf.
It will progress the appraisal of selected storage sites towards readiness for “final investment decisions”, de-risking these stores for potential future storage developers.
The institute says the project will make use of CO2 Stored – the UK’s CO2 storage atlas – which was created from the ETI’s UK Storage Appraisal Project.
Atlas Knowledge has been awarded a contract by INPEX to provide training for production workers involved in the Ichthys LNG project.
The multi-million dollar agreement will see the company develop and deliver custom-made training modules and online 3D models of the project's onshore and offshore production facilities.
The e-learning team will provide all personnel in the integrated operations team with an understanding of the plant, equipment, materials and their associated hazards. Facility-specific modules will take production technicians on an interactive journey to the process area they are assigned to.
Prosecutors in China have charged a former senior official at the National Energy Administration with corruption.
Wei Pengyuan was the deputy director of the administration's coal department.
Endeavour International has launched its marketing process in the UK for the sale all of its North Sea oil and gas assets.
The company said it will consider a full range of options in order to “unlock the underlying value” of its assets, which include interests in five fields in the North Sea.
A spokesman said Endeavour believes the sale of all its North Seas assets would provide the “best means to preserve and protect” the value its other assets.
Oil and gas companies including BG Group, Statoil, Shell, BP, Eni and Total have called on governments around the world to introduce carbon pricing systems in a bid to create a clearer framework which could eventually connect national systems.
They have also called on the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) to back the move.
Manufacturing is growing at a slower rate than expected amid a loss of momentum in the industry, new research has revealed.
The EEF said its latest survey of firms showed that demand for goods in the UK had weakened in the past few months, while exports remain “flat.”
Confidence was said to be slipping, leading to “softer” recruitment plans.
Oklahoma has signed a bill into law which means cities and coutnies will no longer be allowed to ban fracking within the US state.
The move means the process of hydraulic fracturing and other oil and gas operations will be prohibited in towns and cities.
It comes after a similair bill was also signed into law in Texas last month.
Oil major Chevron has reached a settlement with the family of a worker who was burned to death in a gas well fire in the US.
Ian McKee died aged 27-years-old when he had gone to investigate the hissing sound of gas which was escaping under high pressure at the Chevron Lanco 7H well in Greene County, Pennslyvania.
Iraq, OPEC’s second-biggest oil producer, is exporting a new grade of crude after customers complained about the quality of oil from the country.
The Basrah Heavy crude will be exported for the first time starting Monday, shipped from the southern port on the Persian Gulf, Oil Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said on his Facebook page.
Brent oil snapped a two-day advance as Saudi Arabia maintained crude output at a record in May before OPEC meets this week to discuss its production policy.
Futures slid as much as 0.8 percent in London after rising 4.8 percent on Friday. Saudi Arabia pumped 10.25 million barrels a day, unchanged from April and the most in a monthly Bloomberg survey going back to 1989.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will probably maintain its collective quota at 30 million barrels a day when it meets June 5 in Vienna, according to a separate survey last month.
In a good problem to have, Blackstone Group LP had to say no to clients.
Investors sought to put more than $4.5 billion into the firm’s first energy credit fund, two people with knowledge of the details said.
Blackstone in the coming weeks will instead finalize the pool at $3.5 billion, the maximum to which it previously agreed, said the people, who requested anonymity because the close hasn’t been announced.
Facilities management group Richard Irvin Energy Solutions has returned to profit in its latest trading year and says it is ready to hire North Sea engineers who want to move back onshore.
The firm’s management team, led by chief executive Willie MacLean, has worked to turn the business from a £3.1million loss in 2014 to a small pre-tax profit of £74,000 this year.
Mr MacLean, who took over the role of chief executive at the end of 2013, said: “2014 was a year of turnaround for Richard Irvin and, having returned to a stable and profitable position, we can now focus on growing the business in the year ahead.
A Dutch court has rejected a suit to have gas production stopped at one segment of the Groningen gas field.
The move was made in relation to Eemskanaal on the grounds complainants had not proved that stopping exploitation would improve their safety.
The decision by the court is the second in two month regarding exploitation of gas at the field.
The US has a more than 50 percent chance of lifting the ban on most crude oil exports within the next two years, potentially narrowing the gap between domestic and international crude prices, according to Bank of America Corp.
The collapse in domestic gasoline prices has reduced the political cost of tackling the issue, while the prospect of economic sanctions imposed on Iran being removed while the US’s self-imposed ban remains in place seems an unlikely pairing, the bank said in a report dated Thursday.
