Sinopec, the world's second-biggest oil refiner, is on the hunt for minority investments in U.S. shale oil and gas projects as it seeks to diversify China's supply sources, a senior company official said.
The Chinese state energy firm is keen to take a 10-15 percent stake in projects to export liquefied natural gas (LNG), said Jack Yu, managing director of Sinopec D.C., which handles government relations in the U.S. Previous talks over investing in Freeport LNG's project in Texas fell through, he said.
New deals, if they materialize, would come more than two years after Sinopec made waves with two big U.S. investments, spending more than $3 billion buying various shale stakes from Devon Energy and Chesapeake Energy.
Mexico’s oil regulator said it will allow pre-qualified companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. to bid on all 14 shallow water blocks up for auction after removing restrictions.
Companies pre-qualified to bid to explore for oil in Mexico’s shallow waters will be able to participate in auctions for all available blocks, according to Juan Carlos Zepeda, National Hydrocarbons Commissioner.
Participation was limited to five blocks under prior guidelines. Companies participating in group bidding now also have the option to compete individually, Zepeda said Friday in Mexico City.
Oil explorers idled rigs in US fields for the 25th straight week, drawing out an unprecedented retreat in drilling that has curbed the country’s shale oil boom and helped crude prices rally.
Rigs targeting oil in the US declined by 13 to 646, the lowest since August 2010, field services company Baker Hughes Inc. said on its website Friday.
Most of the losses were outside of major basins, with drilling subsiding in states including California and Louisiana.
SK Innovation, which owns South Korea's biggest refiner, said it plans to raise investment in US shale fields.
The company said in a statement it wanted to expand its shale gas fields in both Oklahoma and Texas, which it acquired last year, into nearby areas.
Oil prices eased slightly on Thursday as weak data from the world's top economies raised concern about the outlook for global fuel demand.
Uncertainty over the strength of any decline in US oil output also weighed.
The larger economic picture offset data that showed a large drawdown in US crude stockpiles last week.
June Brent crude was trading 10 cents down at $66.71 a barrel as of 0917 GMT. US crude for June delivery, at $60.20, was 30 cents lower.
The US will become one of the world’s largest oil exporters if domestic production continues to surge and policy makers lift a four-decade ban that keeps most crude from leaving the country, a government-sponsored study shows.
America would be capable of sending as much as 2.4 million barrels a day overseas in 2025 if federal policy makers were to eliminate restrictions on most crude exports, an analysis by Turner, Mason & Co. for the Energy Information Administration shows.
That would make the US the fourth-largest oil exporter, behind Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, based on 2013 EIA data. The report assumes domestic output rises by 7.2 million barrels a day from 2013.
American Eagle Energy has appointed a new chief financial officer to the company.
Martin J Beskow has taken up the role following the resignation of Kirk Stingley.
In a quest to overturn the decades-old restrictions on exporting American crude, the oil industry is seeking the help of an unlikely ally: consumers.
ConocoPhillips Chief Executive Officer Ryan Lance wants to convince the public that allowing exports would actually help push US gasoline prices down.
Existing policy hurts consumers because, while it keeps U.S. oil prices lower than the global crude benchmark, it doesn’t do much to pass that savings on at the pump, he said.
Instead, refiners capable of processing the oil produced by the shale boom profit from lower prices, and then can sell their refined products overseas.
“The ban on exports is anti-consumer,” Lance told reporters after giving a speech at the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston. The industry “needs to educate people that it is better for consumers to be exporting our crude.”
Oil traded near the highest price this year amid speculation a slowdown in the US shale boom will ease the biggest supply glut since 1930.
Futures were little changed in New York after a 5.8 percent gain on Wednesday that capped a five-day rally.
Crude production declined by 20,000 barrels a day to 9.4 million last week, according to the Energy Information Administration.
US Secretary of State John Kerry reassured world powers that a nuclear deal with Iran would hold up to congressional scrutiny.
Canada is seeking new customers for its crude oil as a U.S. review of the Keystone XL pipeline drags on and oil prices languish near $50 a barrel, the country’s Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford said.
Canada sells nearly all of its oil and natural gas to the US, a partnership that amounts to a $140 billion a year business, Rickford said Tuesday at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Future of Energy Summit in New York.
A downturn that has seen oil prices fall about 50 percent will cost Canada $40 billion a year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“Ninety nine percent of our oil goes to the United States right now - 98 percent of our natural gas,” Rickford said. “I don’t think anyone in business would want just one customer.”
Shale drillers will see production drop sooner than expected under a US government forecast, a momentum change that hints at an eventual price rally.
Just five months after Saudi Arabia put the market into a tailspin by refusing to cut supply despite a global glut, the shale oil industry will record its first monthly dip since US officials began weighing output in 2013.
The projected production drop is small, just 1 percent. Yet investors took note, pushing oilfield stocks to the top five spots in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index on Tuesday, led by rig operators Ensco Plc and Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc.
The Obama Administration has unveiled plans for keeping offshore oil wells in check, just a few days before the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
The US Department of Interior said the measures would include more “stringent design requirements” and operational procedures.
Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, said the aim of the proposed measures was to further build on the lessons learned from the 2010 incident in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 workers.
The US is planning to impose a new regulation on offshore oil and gas drilling in a bid to prevent the type of explosions which caused the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
According to reports, the Interior Department could make the announcement as early as this week.
Transocean, Diamond Offshore and Ensco are the drilling contractors deemed by stock analysts at Seeking Alpha to be most at risk this year.
They face the threat of significant contract rollovers but that “actual long-term contracts will not be terminated”.
According to Seeking Alpha, as of March 12 there were 11 new-build floaters scheduled to be delivered to US account this year and which do not have work.
“Some of these rigs have been already delayed until 2016 or will certainly be delayed if they do not have a firm contract,” it says.
Shell has sought an injunction against Greenpeace activists after Arctic drilling protesters boarded an oil rig in the Pacific.
Half a dozen Greenpeace members had approached the rig, the Polar Pioneer, in inflatable boats and scaled the platform.
The Transocean-owned rig is being sent on a vessel called the Blue Marlin to Seattle before heading to the Arctic, according to Greenpeace.
Noble Energy said it has reduced its headcount by more than 200 positions in the US.
The announcement comes just days after EnQuest said up to 146 positions could go following consultation talks regarding a move to a three on, three off shift rotation.
The move has seen around 100 jobs go in Houston, with a number of those being from Noble’s headquarters.
Staff also affected worked at the company’s offices in Denver, Colorado and Pennsylvania.
Refiners are poised to make gasoline at a record pace this year, keeping the biggest US crude glut in more than 80 years from overflowing storage.
They’re enjoying the best margins in two years as they finish seasonal maintenance of their plants before the summer driving season.
They’ll increase output to meet consumer demand and they’ve added more than 100,000 barrels a day of capacity since last summer, when they processed the most oil on record.
Booming crude production expanded inventories this year by 86 million barrels to 471 million, the highest level since 1930.
Oil rose after Iran’s nuclear accord with world powers left the timing of increased crude supplies from the OPEC member uncertain and as Saudi Arabia raised prices for shipments to Asia.
Futures climbed as much as 2.5% in New York.
Physical oil markets won’t be affected by Iran before 2016 as the potential lifting of sanctions, which could allow the Persian Gulf nation to boost production, still faces obstacles, according to Morgan Stanley.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, narrowed the discount on its main Arab Light grade for next month’s sales to Asia.
Oil has advanced the past three weeks amid speculation that Iran won’t be able to boost its crude exports immediately and add to a global supply glut that drove oil almost 50% lower in 2014.
Flames once again ripped through the darkened skies over the Gulf of Mexico. Workers, fearing for their lives, jumped into the black waters.
Four died in the blast. Forty-five others were injured, including 16 who were hospitalized.
The chilling video of fire engulfing an oil processing platform early Wednesday off the Mexican coast summons the ghosts of another disaster that happened in the same body of water five years ago.
The Deepwater Horizon disaster was more deadly, killing 11 workers and seriously injuring 17 more.
Iran and world powers took their biggest step toward ending a decade-old nuclear standoff, saying they agreed on the main outlines of an accord after more than a week of grueling talks.
The deal announced in Lausanne, Switzerland on Thursday doesn’t commit either side to immediate action, and leaves three more months for diplomats to fill in details.
But by outlining areas of consensus, from a timetable for lifting sanctions to the repurposing of Iranian nuclear facilities, it brings the Islamic Republic closer than at any time since the 1979 revolution to international normalcy.
President Barack Obama called it an “historic understanding,” and the International Atomic Energy Agency said it was ready to verify Iran’s actions.
There were early signs, though, that the next steps won’t be easy.
Oil heir Andrew Getty had been diagnosed with a brain aneurysm and had not been eating or sleeping well in the days before his death, the mother of his girlfriend said.
Marilynne DeJonge told The Associated Press she has not spoken to her daughter Lanessa DeJonge since Saturday and is worried about her.
She said Lanessa DeJonge met Mr Getty seven years ago and depended on him for housing, and she does not have a phone.
Oil giant Shell has moved one step closer to oil and gas exploration in the Arctic after the US Interior Department upheld a lease sale from 2008.
In 2012 the company had suffered a number of mishaps in the region.
Now the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will consider Shell’s exploration plan and perform an environmental assessment on it.
The assessment is expected to take at least 30 days to complete.
The four biggest private-equity firms have raised about $30 billion to invest in energy deals. They don’t all agree on how to spend that money.
Carlyle Group LP is prepared to bet that oil prices have bottomed out and sees now as the best time to deploy its money, co-founder David Rubenstein said last week.
Apollo Global Management LLC says the sell-off in oil isn’t over yet and the highest-returning deals are still on the horizon.
“There will be attractive opportunities to buy now,” Rubenstein said March 23 at the SelectUSA Investment Summit in Washington. Greg Beard, who leads energy investing at Apollo, sees a different timeline: “The worst, the problems, are yet to come,” he said in an interview last month.
A US farmer stunned the audience of a Nebraskan Oil & Gas Conservation committee hearing when he called upon members of the board to drink water which he said had been contaminated by fracking.
James Osborne,who lives in the Midwestern state, brought with him a water bottle and cup containing fresh water as well as water he claimed had been affected.
A public hearing is currently being held on a proposal by an oil company to ship fracking wastewater from out of state into Nebraska.
The price of oil could reach $100 a barrel by the end of next year, according to an industry expert.
T.Boone Pickens had previously said he expected a barrel of oil to sell for $80 to $90 within the next year.
