The oil industry has called for “clarity” on social distancing guidelines on oil rigs following claims firms are confused about how workers should behave when offshore.
Norway has said it will soon decide whether to cut its oil production to help support plummeting prices.
The UK North Sea offshore industry can weather a raging storm in global oil markets, a leading expert said yesterday.
Unprecedented, unbelievable, ‘off-the-scale’ can’t really sum up what happened to oil prices in North America on Monday April 20. Both WTI (West Texas intermediate) and WCS (Western Canadian Select) plunged to below $0 per barrel and recorded an oil price of minus $38 per barrel for the first time in history. Although there has been talk about negative oil prices for months, nobody really predicted anything on this scale.
As the oil market collapse has taken WTI into the uncharted and “impossible” territory of negative prices, there has been considerable attention not only on where prices might be going, but also what is happening to the forward curve, and what it means. Even in more normal markets, the structure of the forward curve “backwardation” and “contango” is a source of confusion – mystery even.
As Coronavirus lockdowns continue to spread around the world, the oil industry faces more disruption to demand and supply chains, with many margins and prices already collapsing.
With the reality that Brent oil prices are scratching closer and closer to $20 per barrel, shut-ins are already happening around the world. Even if prices reach this threshold, the UK will avoid shut-ins and exploration is likely to continue in 2020, although cash flow and project sanctioning will suffer, a Rystad Energy impact analysis shows.
The North Sea offshore oil and gas industry isn’t immune from the effects of COVID-19, which are wide reaching and present significant challenges.
A professional services giant will warn the oil industry that sweeping redundancies could ruin companies’ chances of cashing in when market conditions start to recover.
Short-term pain, long-term gain.
The oil and gas industry has been battered by a perfect hurricane of the three Cs: coronavirus, climate concern and a collapse in crude prices. But a fourth big C, a perennial threat to the health of the sector, lurks in the background and could cause even greater damage than usual in today’s fraught operating environment.
Oil and gas firm Apache has taken a step forward in its mission to develop the Gair field in the northern North Sea.
It is amazing how fast things have changed. It is only a few months ago that I made my new year resolutions for 2020. Beaming with optimism and positive energy, I set out ambitious targets to ensure 2020 would be a year to remember.
Even Cluff Natural Resources (CLNR), despite being debt-free with no producing assets (yet) and almost totally gas-focused, has not been immune to the effects of oil price volatility in recent weeks.
Oil pushed higher after swinging wildly in early trading as investors weighed whether an historic deal by the world’s biggest producers to cut output would be enough to steady a market pummeled by the coronavirus.
The number of rigs anchored in the Cromarty Firth rose to 17 this week, as low oil prices continued to hit the oil and gas industry.
A trade union has claimed drilling contractor Archer intends to make 130 North Sea workers redundant.
As 2020 cranked into gear, there was broadly an air of modest optimism across the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS).
A global deal to cut oil supply and stem a historic price rout hung in the balance on Sunday as negotiators raced to find an agreement with just hours to go until the market opens.
A global deal to cut oil production and save the market from a coronavirus-induced breakdown proved elusive on Friday as a diplomatic initiative led by Saudi Arabia suffered repeated setbacks.
EnQuest has insisted its day-to-day operations are not “materially affected” by the coronavirus outbreak.
Since OPEC+’s failure to agree on production restraint on 5-6 March, the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic have become far clearer, sparking a crisis in the oil market as prices fell and supply ramped up.
The proposed 10 million bpd cut by OPEC+ for May and June will keep the world from physically testing the limits of storage capacity and save prices from falling into a deep abyss, but it will still not restore the desired market balance. Just hours before delegates stepped into the (again virtual) closed meeting, Brent was fluttering in the mid-$30s, seemingly oblivious to the fact that even if a 10 million bpd cut is agreed upon, or even in the best-case scenario 15 million bpd if the US, Canada, Norway and Brazil join forces, an excess of supply of the magnitude of 5-10 million bpd will remain, and will need to be stored.
Shell has hit pause on a number of UK North Sea projects due to the recent crude price drop and Covid-19 outbreak, it is understood.
EnQuest today announced deeper cuts to its spending plans as it published full-year results showing it lurched into the red in 2019.