The chief executive of Cheniere Energy plans to cash in on 50,000 shares in the company, according to a recent regulatory filing. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing shows Charif Souki holds around 3.4million shares in the firm.
London’s blue chip share index remained in negative territory as details of a radical restructuring at mining giant Anglo American compounded falls in the under-pressure commodities sector. Anglo saw its shares fall 10% to a new record low after it suspended its dividend for the first time in eight years and unveiled a major overhaul - including another 67,000 job losses next year.
SapuraKencana Petroleum has won engineering and construction contracts including a number of extensions in a deal worth $72million. The company said it had been awarded a contract by Roc Oil to provide engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning for production and drilling on a platform in the D35 field offshore Sarawak.
Terra Nova Energy said it has spudded the Baikal 1 well in Southern Australia. The company said the start of operations from the Baikal well had been completed using the Eastern Well 101 rig.
Eni said it has sold its remaining 4% stake in Portugal’s Galp Energia in a $348million deal. The Italian oil and gas group said it has sold the shares through an accelerated bookbuilding procedure at a price of €9.81 each.
The London market has closed higher despite seeing travel firms slump as a result of the Paris terror attacks. The FTSE 100 Index was up 28.1 points to 6146.4, led by housebuilder Taylor Wimpey as it reported a record order book. UK and European markets had been knocked by around 1% in the first hour of trading, but later recovered with Germany’s DAX flat and France’s Cac 40 down slightly.
Renewable Energy Generation Limited said it expects to receive a formal takeover offer soon.
Construction of a new renewable energy plant has been temporarily suspended, affecting 700 workers. Air Products said it had decided to temporarily halt building a second energy-from-waste plant in Tees Valley. The company said that as with many ground breaking projects, improvements were identified as construction advances.
Chesapeake Energy has reduced its 2015 capital budget for the second time this year as looks to cope with the decline in oil and gas prices. The company, which raised its production forecast, has also been hit by weak natural gas prices. Around 15% of its workforce has been cut so far.
Viking Supply Ships said it has lay up one of its vessels as a result of the oil price decline. The company will begin negotiations with employees and unions in a bid to assess the on-going crew situation as it looks to minimise job losses.
Taxpayer-backed Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) was a heavy faller in the London market after revealing a sharp fall in third-quarter pre-tax profit. The lender said its pre-tax profit before one-time items and restructuring costs came in at £842 million for the quarter, compared to £2.05 billion a year earlier. The FTSE 100 Index opened 15.8 points down at 6379.8, following a fall of more than 40 points in the previous session.
Crude was poised to end the month below $50 a barrel for the fourth time amid a global glut that’s showing no signs of relief for oil and gas companies that posted more than $19 billion in writedowns in a single week. Futures slid as much as 1.3 percent in New York. Output from Iraq, the second-biggest OPEC producer, exceeds 4 million barrels a day, Oil Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said, according to the Almada news website.
UK Oil & Gas (UKOG) said it has applied for admission of its shared capital to trading on the ISDX growth market. The admission is expected to take place next month on the London-based stock exchange which provides UK and international companies with access to European capital through listed and growth markets.
More than $19 billion in oil and gas writedowns have been reported in a single week as producers acknowledge what investors already knew. Royal Dutch Shell Plc leads the pack in recognizing that drilling prospects are worth a lot less than they used to. The producer announced its worst loss in 16 years on Thursday, including $8.2 billion in impairments. Southwestern Energy Co., Whiting Petroleum Corp. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. have likewise written off acreage value. For investors, those charges aren’t much of a surprise after oil tumbled 44 percent in the past year, dragging stock prices along with it. Shell has declined 15 percent in the past 12 months, Whiting is down 73 percent and Anadarko fell 26 percent.
AWE Limited said its sale revenues fell by 27% in the third quarter of the year compared to second quarter results. The company also said it had put in place an oil price hedging program to underpin cash flow next year. There was a net debt of $156million, comprising cash of $54million and drawn debt of $210million.
Global industrial giant Smiths Group has snapped up an Aberdeen-based energy consultancy. XPD8, founded in 2003, will become part of John Crane, the largest operating division of the FTSE-100 listed parent company. The deal marks an exit for XPD8’s private equity backer Maven Capital Partners and the firm’s founder, Mark Cavanagh.
Oil giant BP reported a 40% drop in quarterly earnings after it was impacted by low crude prices, but still came in ahead of analysts’ forecasts. The firm’s underlying replacement cost profit for the third quarter was 1.819 billion US dollars (£1.185 billion), compared with 3.037 billion US dollars (£1.979 million) a year ago. However, the FTSE 100 Index was down 17.4 points to 6400.1, led lower by miners and uncertain prospects for global trade.
Oil extended losses from the lowest close in two months before U.S. government data forecast to show crude stockpiles expanded in the world’s biggest consumer. Futures slid as much as 1.5 percent in New York, falling for a third day. Inventories probably rose by 3.1 million barrels last week, according to a Bloomberg survey before an Energy Information Administration report Wednesday. Algeria supports Venezuela’s call for a summit of heads of state from OPEC and other oil-exporting nations to lift prices, Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra said in Paris. Oil’s rally above $50 a barrel earlier this month failed as surging U.S. inventories bolstered speculation that a global glut will be prolonged. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries continues to pump above its quota and the International Energy Agency sees world crude supplies remaining ample until at least the middle of 2016.
Tethys Oil said it produced more than 9,000 barrels per day from its onshore blocks in Oman last month. The company said its share of production before government take from blocks three and four amounted to 295,502 barrels of oil in total.
Noble Midstream Partners LP has filed with US regulators for an initial public offering of common units today. The company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Noble Energy, will own assets in Colarado’s DJ Basin crude oil, natural gas and water-related midstream services.
Oil climbed from a three-week low as traders snapped up contracts dragged down by expanding U.S. inventories. December futures rose as much as 1.7 percent to $45.95 a barrel in New York. They settled at $45.20 on Wednesday after US government data showed stockpiles expanded by 8.03 million barrels last week, the biggest increase since April and more than twice the gain forecast. “There was a perfect excuse yesterday to send oil through $45 after the bigger-than-expected rise in inventories,” Ole Sloth Hansen, an analyst at Saxo Bank A/S, said by e-mail from Copenhagen. “That did not happen and it could potentially signal that traders are looking to pick up contracts at the bottom of the range that has prevailed since early September.”
Baker Hughes said it expects less drilling in the current quarter caused by a reduction in customer spending. The oilfield services provider said it had seen "stronger interest" in other services helping to increase oil and gas production.
Premier Inn owner Whitbread and InterContinental Hotels saw shares leap higher after well-received figures, but further falls for commodity stocks held back progress on the wider FTSE 100 Index. Whitbread, which also owns Costa Coffee and restaurant brands including Brewers Fayre, saw shares lift more than 2% after a better-than-expected 13.8% hike in half-year profits to £291.3 million. Holiday Inn parent InterContinental also cheered the market with recent solid trading, although the FTSE 100 Index struggled to make headway, edging 12.1 points higher to 6364.4 as miners and oil firms lost more ground following yesterday’s weak China growth figures.
Oil Search Ltd., the target of a takeover bid from Woodside Petroleum Ltd., posted a 30 percent decline in third-quarter sales after a drop in energy prices. Revenue fell to $379 million from $538.2 million a year earlier, according to a statement from Oil Search on Tuesday. Sales dropped 3 percent from the June quarter. Output rose to a record 7.42 million barrels of oil equivalent, the company said.
Halliburton Co., the world’s largest fracking services provider, said it had a third-quarter loss as the volatile North American oil market continued to tumble. The company reported a loss of $54 million, or 6 cents a share, compared with net income of $1.2 billion, or $1.41, a year earlier, the Houston-based company said in a statement Monday on Businesswire. Excluding certain items, the per-share result was 4 cents more than the 27-cent average of 34 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales dropped 36 percent to $5.6 billion. "It was a challenging period," Luke Lemoine, an analyst at Capital One Southcoast in New Orleans who rates the shares the equivalent of a buy and owns none, said in a phone interview before the results were released. "Most people at the beginning of the quarter were expecting things to level off. Well, they continued to more or less crash."