After 17 months of civil war spanning a swathe of South Sudan bigger than Syria, President Salva Kiir’s survival may hinge on the fate of a single oil field.
Paloch in Upper Nile state, the only region still pumping crude in a nation with sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest reserves, has re-emerged as the rebels’ prime target.
While the insurgents probably couldn’t find a market for its oil, the facilities’ capture or damage could spell disaster for a government that’s battling surging inflation and a slumping currency, and which depends on crude for about 90 percent of its income, according to analysts including Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School in Massachusetts.
Investor resolutions urging corporate leaders to be more environmentally friendly in how they run their businesses are being rolled out at a record pace this year for the energy industry.
Just don’t expect them to pass.
Proposals meant to nudge Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. into nominating directors with environmental expertise, setting greenhouse gas targets, and compiling reports on minimizing fracking risks are among seven such resolutions being voted on Wednesday when the two biggest US oil companies hold their shareholder meetings.
Mexico approved 19 companies and seven groups to bid on 14 shallow-water exploration blocks as the country prepares to allow private producers to drill in its waters for the first time since 1938.
Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., and Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp., were among the companies that Mexico’s oil regulator, known as CNH, cleared to develop an estimated 80,000 daily crude barrels in the Gulf of Mexico, Commissioner Juan Carlos Zepeda said in a live feed of the meeting.
Some 34 companies applied to pre-qualify for the July 15 auction.
The Government has been warned it faces resistance to cuts amid an increase in industrial unrest since the general election.
A threatened bank holiday rail strike was averted after Network Rail improved a pay offer, but many other disputes have broken out, or worsened, since the Conservatives took power.
Steel workers, probation staff, London Underground employees, North Sea oil workers and university lecturers are among those involved in industrial rows over a range of issues including pay, pensions and jobs.
Petronas has achieved first oil from the Bukit Tua field.
The project is the company's biggest Upstream project in Indonesia to date.
It is expected to produce around 3,700 barrels of oil per day and two million standard cubic feet of gas per day in its initial production stage.
Nigerian stocks retreated for a fifth day, with the declines seen continuing as Africa’s biggest oil producer faces a fuel shortage that’s crippling the economy and causing companies to cut back operations.
Shares in Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, Nigeria’s biggest lender by market value, dropped as it closed branches early on Monday amid a shortage of diesel for generators.
Dangote Flour Mills Plc’s stock fell to the lowest in almost two months as it was forced to rely on “highly erratic” electricity from the national grid to run its plants without fuel for generators, according to African Alliance Securities Ltd.
Tourism has not only recovered on the Gulf Coast five years after the BP oil spill - industry officials say it is surging, and they credit fallout from the environmental disaster as being part of the reason why.
BP spent more than $230 million (£148 million) promoting tourism after the 2010 spill, and the company aired national adverts promoting the region for years.
Israel's anti-monopoly regulator is set to step down later this year - a move which could ease pressure on exploration companies in the region.
Antitrust Commissioner David Gilo had been pushing to open the energy sector to competition.
Last year he caused a stir when he ruled that both Noble and Delek may constitute a monopoly over their control of two large natural gas fields Tamar and Leviathan.
Cooper Energy Limited said the Sensation-1 exploration well has been plugged and abandoned.
The oil exploration well in the Cooper Basin had reached a total depth of 1,937 metres in the Merrimelia formation.
Iran is set to abolish motorists' allowance for heavily subsidised fuel and set a price, according to the country's deputy oil minister.
The move is being made as the government makes careful steps to cut back on costly handouts.
According to reports, Abbas Kazemi said petrol would now be sold at a single rate of $0.35 per litre.
Workers have been safely evacuated after the Foster Creek oil sands and Athabasca natural gas operation after a forest fire on the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range in northeastern Alberta.
The fire has been burning about 25kilometres south of Cenovus's Foster Creek facility.
The company said the decision to send staff home and shut down production was made because of the fire's proximity to the only access road to the facilities.
Questerre Energy has signed an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The agreement is for the appraisal and development of oil shale acreage in Jordan.
It encompasses two blocks covering 388km in the Isfir-Jafr area, which is 200km south of the capital, Amman.
Safety officials have warned owners of the oil pipeline which ruptured last week that numerous measures must be taken before the line can be restarted.
Work needed includes an in-depth analysis of the factors which may have contributed to the spill.
The corrective action order was issued just a few days after the incident by the US Transportation Department's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration.
A group of US senators has called on the Obama administration to halt oil major Shell's preparations for oil exploration in the Arctic.
The move - by mostly Democratic senators - was made amidst fears the region has a limited capacity to respond to accidents.
A letter was sent by the senators to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and urged her to retire Arctic leases in the Chukchi Sea.
Cooper Energy said the acquisition of a 50% interest in the Sole gas field in the Gippsland Basin and Orbost Gas Plant has been completed.
The project has now entered into the FEED (Front End Engineering and Design) phase.
The joint venture involves Cooper Energy and Santos Limited and both will now work to completion of FEED for a final investment decision next year.
A platform gathering oil in the Gulf of Mexico shut in about 2,200 barrels a day of output after a compressor caught fire.
The Texas Petroleum Investment Co. platform in Breton Sound Block 21, near the southeastern Louisiana coast, evacuated 28 workers without injury after the compressor fire, according to a US Coast Guard statement.
A Coast Guard boat crew was fighting the blaze, and a 1.4-mile rainbow sheen was “drifting southwest of the platform.”
The newly-appointed energy minister came to Aberdeen just days into the start of her term to underline the importance of the North Sea to the UK.
Andrea Leadsom, the Conservative member of parliament for South Northamptonshire, was appointed the fifth minister of state in as many years following the Conservative general election victory. She will report to Amber Rudd, the new secretary of state overseeing Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc).
Ms Leadsom said her priorities will be “keeping the lights on, keeping the bills down – and getting a climate change deal in Paris”.
One of her first jobs will be to attend the major UN climate summit in Paris later this year, where it is thought Germany and France plan to push for an “ambitious, comprehensive and binding” global agreement on cutting carbon emissions, replacing the Kyoto Protocol.
Third Energy has submitted an application for fracking at a site in northeast England.
The application is for fracking at its Kirby Misperton well in north Yorkshire.
It is the third such application being assessed by British authorities.
The SNP has been given the chairmanship of the Westminster committee that will scrutinise new devolution legislation.
A nationalist MP will chair the Scottish Affairs Committee in the House of Commons, whose members will examine the Scotland Bill after it is published next week.
Prime Minister David Cameron has already pledged to include a Bill to implement the recommendations of the Smith Commission on devolution in his first Queen’s Speech after winning the election.
Advance wells solutions took centre stage at a showcase event hosted by Welltec.
Senior wells operations personnel from a range of offshore operators and contractors took the opportunity to hear more about the company's portfolio of award-winning technologies.
Wider well design issues were also discussed.
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An appeal by oil major Shell against a ruling that a proposed oil-by-rail project at its Washington state refinery must undergo a full environmental review, has been denied.
A judge made the ruling just two weeks after a crude train derailment caused a fire in North Dakota.
Shell had appealed a ruling in February from a Skagit County Office of Land Use Hearings examiner that a plan to move 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil to is 145,000 barrels bpd Puget Sound refinery in Anacortes must be completely reviewed.
Petroliam Nasional Bhd., Malaysia’s state oil company, posted a 43 percent decline in first-quarter profit after a plunge in crude oil prices.
Net income dropped to 9.3 billion ringgit ($2.6 billion) in the three months through March 31, compared with 16.2 billion ringgit a year ago, the company said in a statement today. Revenue fell 21 percent to 66.2 billion ringgit, as lower oil prices offset an increase in production.
The company expects sustained low oil prices to affect its 2015 performance. Excess supply on the back of moderate global oil demand continues to put pressure on crude, it said in the statement.
“We view this period of low oil prices as an opportune time to relook at our internal processes,” Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin, who took over as president and chief executive officer last month, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur Friday.
Aberdeen firm Hydro Group has started work on a green-energy development in France under a £2.5million contract won as a result of links it established with a French company last year.
Hydro, which designs and manufactures cables and connectors for subsea and onshore use, said yesterday the Franco-Scottish consortium it formed with Wenex Equipments was to manufacture and install array cabling infrastructure on the SEM-REV marine renewables project offshore of Le Croisic on the French Atlantic coast.
Awarded by Ecole Centrale Nates (ECN), the six-month contract commenced earlier this year.
Hydro, one of a string of consortium partners involved in the work, has also been showcasing its marine-renewable energy products and expertise at the THETIS Marine Renewable Energy Conference in Nantes, France, this week.
Statoil has come up dry with two wildcat wells near to the Hyme field in the Norwegian Sea.
The wells - 6407/8-7 and 6407/8-7 A - have now been plugged and abandoned.
The primary exploration target in well 6407/8-7 was to prove petroleum in the Middle Jurassic reservoir rocks, while the second exploration target was to prove petroleum in the Lower Jurassic reservoir rocks.
