Wood Group could be making further reductions to its headcount. The company is understood to be in talks with staff members as it looks to lower costs during the oil price decline. Staff were informed of the potential changes during a town hall meeting.
Baron Oil has resumed production at the Nancy 1 well in Colombia after it was temporarily shut in earlier this month. The company said it was gradually increasing production at the Nancy 1 well in the Nancy Burdine Maxine oil field to the 400 barrels of oil per day target for the site. Baron said maintenance work is also due to begin on the Acae River Bridge this week.
Saipem has posted a better than expected profits boost in its first quarter results. The Italian oil services group, which is 43% owned by oil major Eni, said its earnings before interest and taxes came in at €159million.
A Libyan oilfield has been forced to close after a strike by a security guards over salary payments. The state oil firm NOC said the staff members were unhappy about the delay, but said the security forces had been paid although they hadn't paid their guards yet. The El Feel oilfield had only just restarted production after a pipeline had been blocked for months.
Tullow Oil Plc gained in London after a tribunal ruling on a maritime border dispute between Ghana and Ivory Coast allowed an offshore oil project to proceed. Tullow said the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme, or TEN, project can move ahead after a preliminary decision by the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. While the tribunal placed restrictions on drilling in the disputed area off West Africa’s coast, Tullow has enough wells already in place to start production next year. “Development work on the TEN Project continues,” Tullow said in a statement on Monday. “The project remains within budget and on schedule with first oil expected in mid-2016.”
Cheap hotel prices in Glasgow in early May highlight one of the reasons why the organisers of the UK’s largest green-energy show were so keen to move it from Aberdeen this year. But it could be back in Europe’s energy capital within a few years, thanks to current hotel projects and a major new venue in the city, north-east MSP Lewis Macdonald told the Press & Journal. A check yesterday on a well-known booking website showed rooms in three-star hotels in Glasgow on Tuesday May 5, the eve of All-Energy 2015, and Wednesday, May 6 are available from £45 a night. For those people still needing a room after the event ends on Thursday, May 7, three-star budget accommodation is available for only £35.
Petroceltic has awarded a contract to drill development wells at the Ain Tsila gas and condensate field in Algeria to Sinopec Petroleum Service. The 1500 horse power rig, which is now built and ready to ship, will drill up to 24 new development wells. The company said the first 12 drilling locations – all in the northern region of the field – have been selected and approved.
Kosmos Energy said its Tortue-1 exploration well has made a “significant” gas discovery at the Greater Tortue complex. The company made the discovery in Block C-8 offshore Mauritania. An appraisal program is now being planned for the discovery and in addition the Marsouin-1 exploration well in the central part of Black C-8 is expected to spud in the third quarter of 2015.
Chesapeake Energy has agreed to a $25million compensation fund as part of a settlement deal on charges brought by the state of Michigan. The company had faced charges of antitrust and racketeering. A criminal antitrust trial which was underway in the US state has now been suspended as part of the settlement.
Premier Oil has suspended drilling of the Isobel Deep wildcat off the Falkland Islands due to a problem detected with the BOP (Blowout Preventer). The company's partner Falkland Oil & Gas said following the successful setting of the casing at a depth of 1273.9metres, a problem had been detected, with the well being temporarily suspended. The BOP has been brought to surface for inspection and repairs.
The UK Government has warned oil giant BP it would oppose any foreign takeovers bids for the company. Shell’s recent takeover of BG has heightened speculation that BP could be the next company to be caught up in a wave of mergers since the oil price decline. According to reports, ExxonMobil could make a move for BP.
Profits at British Gas are set to rise after the energy supplier revealed a boost in consumption following a colder than normal start to the year. Owner Centrica added that British Gas had stemmed the flow of customers leaving the business, with the number of accounts on its books staying at 14.8 million following a 5% cut in gas tariffs from the end of February. The FTSE 100 company reported improved profitability in its supply business in the first quarter of the year but said this was more than offset by lower commodity prices in its upstream production arm. It also announced that it had set aside an additional £50 million over the next three years to improve customer service.
PetroChina Co. and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., the nation’s two largest oil explorers, jumped by their daily trading limit in Shanghai today on speculation the government is considering mergers. “Big oil names are soaring because of speculation that the government is studying mergers in the industry,” said Clement Cheng, an equity trader at RBC Investment Management Asia in Hong Kong. “The oil sector has been undervalued for a long time.”
Ghana can’t drill new oil wells in a disputed sea area with Ivory Coast, according to a special tribunal. The order may impact producers, including Tullow Oil Plc. Ghana and Ivory Coast “shall pursue cooperation and refrain from unilateral action that may lead to aggravating the dispute,” the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea said in a statement on its website Saturday. The order is provisional pending a final decision. Ivory Coast challenged sea boundaries with neighboring Ghana and asked the arbitration panel to order Ghana to halt drilling in an area where Tullow operates its Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme project. TEN is set to produce its first oil in mid-2016.
Petrobras, the world’s most indebted oil producer, may sell stakes in some assets via initial public offerings as part of a wider effort to boost cash levels and improve its financial health. “Our role here is to find the hidden values,” Chief Financial Officer Ivan Monteiro said in an interview Thursday. “There are tons of hidden values at Petrobras, I would say barrels of hidden values.” Monteiro is one of the two bankers President Dilma Rousseff chose in February to steer the oil producer out of an accounting crisis that threatened to trigger an acceleration of debt payments.
Mol Nyrt. bought the Norwegian unit of Ithaca Energy Inc. as Hungary’s largest refiner expands North Sea production to counter a decline in other areas. Mol bought a 100 percent stake in Ithaca Petroleum Norge for $60 million and agreed to a discovery bonus of at most $30 million, according to a statement published on the Budapest Stock Exchange website on Friday. Mol’s shares rose as much as 2.5 percent after the deal that promises to double its total hydrocarbon reserves. Mol, Hungary’s second-largest listed company by market value, is buying assets as its reserves dwindle in eastern Europe and a civil war keeps operations halted in Syria.
Cnooc Ltd., China’s biggest offshore oil and gas explorer, posted a 40 percent decline in first-quarter oil and gas sales because of lower crude prices. Oil and gas sales dropped to 35.5 billion yuan ($5.7 billion) in the three months ended March 31 from 59.1 billion yuan a year earlier, the Beijing-based company said in a statement Friday to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
North Sea oil and gas company Trap Oil Group (Trapoil) saw its shares nearly halve in value yesterday after it warned it may go bust. In a bleak outlook with 2014 results, the firm said it was in urgent need of a “viable funding solution” – without which it was “highly likely” that it would run out of money by July. Trapoil is one of the once-ambitious new entrants to the market which emerged in much healthier times for the industry not so long ago. Founded in 2007, it raised £60million when it floated on London’s Alternative Investment Market in April 2011. After swooping to buy husband and wife-run Banchory firm Reach Oil and Gas for £30million it quickly embarked on a mission to become one of the most active explorers in the North Sea.
Energy service giant Weatherford International said yesterday it had ramped up job cuts to 10,000 in response to lower oil prices. The number is 2,000 more than it had previously announced for this year and the new total will leave it with about 39,000 people in its core global operations, plus 6,000 on rigs. Weatherford, which has its global headquarters in Switzerland, with Europe and Caspian business run from offices in Aberdeen, said most of the extra 2,000 jobs being axed were in North America.
Oil giant BP insists it remains committed to the UK North Sea despite it yesterday agreeing to sell its 36.22% stake in the Central Area Transmission System (Cats) pipeline system to a private-equity firm for £324million. BP is the operator of Cats, which is now 99% owned by Antin Infrastructure Partners. ConocoPhillips and Eni own the other 1% between them. Trevor Garlick, regional president, BP North Sea, said: “The North Sea is an important region for BP. “Our strategy here is to focus our resources and investment to create an efficient, sustainable and competitive business which will contribute to UK energy security for many years to come. “Key elements of this are the completion of our major projects in the central North Sea and Shetland area, and continued management of our portfolio.”
Aberdeen oil and gas technology firm Petrotechnics has been signed up to help improve the safety of rail workers as part of a national initiative by track owner and operator Network Rail. Petrotechnics specialises in software to improve frontline operational performance and risk management in hazardous industries. Announcing its latest contract yesterday, its said its Proscient system was to be used to increase safety and improve productivity across 20,000 miles of railway by reducing the risk of delays, engineering overruns and spiralling maintenance costs. Working in partnership with the US technology giant Computer Sciences Corporation, Petrotechnics’ input forms part of Network Rail’s Planning and Delivering Safe Work programme, which is introducing safety improvements across the UK rail network.
Independent offshore infrastructure owners should be subject to normal corporation tax to stimulate the growth of these companies, according to an oil and gas expert at law firm Bond Dickinson. Uisdean Vass, oil and gas partner for Bond Dickinson in Aberdeen, told an audience of North Sea oil and gas bosses at a business gathering in the Granite City last night the current taxation model for independent offshore infrastructure owners was unfair and counter-productive to the needs of not just the industry, but also the UK economy. Last year’s Wood Review encouraged the emergence of a class of independent infrastructure owners and Mr Vass said fiscal changes were one effective way of supporting this aim.
Energy consultant Adil said yesterday it aimed to arrest declining interest in North Sea brownfield projects and potentially unlock 250million barrels of oil equivalent (boe). The Aberdeen company announced it had refocused its specialist brownfield project management team to help operators drive improved efficiency in “this challenging sector”. Adil has put a set of guidelines together to help the industry learn from its experience of what characterises successful projects.
The Supreme Court in the Netherlands has given a final verdict in favour of Ecopetrol. It comes after Llanos Oil Exploration filed a lawsuit in 2011.
BP Plc expects to start drilling an untapped oil frontier off the coast of southern Australia later than it had estimated, citing the potential for a delay in the delivery of the rig. The UK energy giant plans to begin drilling in late 2016, compared with its initial target of early next year, BP’s Australian unit said Thursday in an e-mailed response to questions. “We have anticipated some slippage in timelines,” according to the statement. “It is in BP’s best interest to commence drilling in late 2016 rather than risk creeping delays and premature expenditure.”