Shell has declared force majeure on gas supplies to Nigeria's LNG export terminal on Bonny Island in Rivers State due to a pipeline leak, a spokesman for the company said on Thursday. "Shell declared force majeure on gas supplies from SPDC to NLNG (Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Co), effective August 4," spokesman Precious Okolobo said, adding that the company was investigating the cause of the leak.
U.S. oil refiner PBF Energy is shipping a cargo of crude from Western Canada to supply its plant on the other side of the continent, a rare move traders say is a sign steep discounts for oil sands are upending age-old trade routes. The deal set the market abuzz on Wednesday with traders speculating about the status of the shipment of up to 500,000 barrels of crude. Two traders said PBF picked up a cargo coming from the Kearl oil sands projects operated by Imperial Oil in northern Alberta at a hefty discount.
The population of a U.S. oil boomtown that became a symbol of the fracking revolution is dropping fast because of the collapse in crude oil prices, according to an unusual metric: the amount of sewage produced. Williston, North Dakota, has seen its population drop about 6 percent since last summer, according to wastewater data relied upon heavily by city planning officials. They turned to measuring effluent because it was a much faster and more accurate way to track population than alternatives such as construction permits, school enrollment, tax receipts or airport boardings.
Fund firm Aviva Investors said on Wednesday it opposed a $2.3 billion plan by Vedanta to buy out minority shareholders in Cairn India as the deal failed to deliver sufficient value. Aviva's UK equity team has a 4.3 percent stake in Cairn Energy, the original owner of Cairn India and still its largest minority shareholder. Its emerging market equity teams, meanwhile, both own stakes in Cairn India, it said. "As long-term investors, we believe that the timing of this deal is opportunistic and materially undervalues Cairn India, its current reserves and future prospects," Aviva Investors, part of insurer Aviva, said in a statement.
A £20million programme of seismic surveys aimed at reinvigorating exploration in the North Sea has got off to a flying start, the UK oil and gas industry’s regulator said yesterday. It was thought the work would get under way at the beginning of August, but vessels have been surveying since July 21. The Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) said more than 1,400 linear miles have been covered since then, with three vessels currently engaged in the task.
The UK Government has given development consent to Dogger Bank Teesside A & B offshore wind farm, Britain's Planning Inspectorate said on Wednesday.
U.S. natural gas producer Chesapeake Energy reported a quarterly loss, compared with a year-earlier profit, as it took a $5 billion charge on some oil and gas assets. Oil and gas producers including Encana and Chevron have taken massive impairment charges this year as the value of their assets has dropped after global oil prices more than halved in the past year. Natural gas prices, which have also plunged due to a supply glut, are showing no signs of recovery.
A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday rejected Ecuador's challenge to a $96 million international arbitration award in favor of energy giant Chevron, marking the latest twist in a decades-long dispute over the development of oil fields in the South American country. The dispute stemmed from a 1973 deal that called for Texaco Petroleum Co, later acquired by Chevron, to develop oil fields in exchange for selling oil to the Ecuadorean government at below-market rates. Texaco filed several lawsuits in the 1990s accusing Ecuador of violating the contract. The District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2011 award from The Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Netherlands.
Indonesia's state energy company Pertamina is losing 80 billion rupiah ($6 million) a day from the sale of fuels at prices set by the government below market rates, it said on Wednesday.
Hungarian oil and gas group MOL's second-quarter net profit surged 161 percent from a year earlier as its downstream segment posted its best ever quarterly result thanks to strong refining and petrochemicals margins. The company's so called clean EBITDA, or core earnings, jumped 89 percent to 179.5 billion forints ($629.63 million), exceeding analysts' median forecast of 169.9 billion in a poll by business website portfolio.hu. It was also above the 154.1 billion forints core earnings recorded in the first quarter. MOL posted a net profit of 62.7 billion forints, compared to a profit of 24 billion forints in the same period of 2014.
The head of an Aberdeen-based energy sector procurement services firm that went bust last month has started trading again. Warren Anderson was the controlling shareholder in Gas and Oil Technology Services (GOT Services) when administrators were brought in to wind down the business in July, putting 19 employees out of work with immediate effect. But last week it emerged that Mr Anderson had set up GOT Procurement Services at the same registered address less than a fortnight after the earlier venture hit the buffers.
British oil major BP has halted its deepwater exploration activities off Uruguay as it prioritizes lower-risk projects at a time of low international prices, an official at Uruguay's state-owned oil company Ancap said on Monday. BP confirmed its exit from the South American country, three years after it won rights to explore blocks 11 and 12 in Uruguay's Pelotas basin and block 6 in the Punta del Este basin. The acreage covers an area of almost 26,000 square kilometers in waters ranging from 50 to 2,000 meters deep. "BP has other exploration projects in other parts of the world that are lower risk. In today's environment, there is a limit to investments," said Hector de Santa Ana, head of Exploration and Production at Ancap.
Energy firm GE Oil and Gas today announced plans to cut jobs at its facility in Peterhead due to low oil prices. GE employs about 130 people at the base, where components used in the oil and gas industry are made. The firm, which also has operations in Aberdeen and Montrose, did not specify the exact number of staff members it intends to lay off, or the amount of money it expects to save as a result of the measure.
Gazprom is in talks with Engie on participation in an expanded Nord Stream pipeline to carry gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Terms for Brazil's 13th Oil Round, in which the government hopes to sell rights to 266 exploratory blocks in early October, "are the worst ever", the Brazilian Petroleum Institute (IBP) that represents potential investors said on Monday.
Nigeria's new president should overhaul how Africa's biggest oil producer sells its state oil company's share of crude oil output to save billions of dollars in wasted and lost revenues, a report by an international governance watchdog said on Tuesday. About half of Nigeria's 2 million barrel per day (bpd) crude output goes to NNPC, the state-owned oil company. NNPC sells half that oil to its subsidiary Pipelines and Product Marketing Co for the country's refineries. The poorly maintained plants are however unable to process the bulk of the oil and over the years this allocation has devolved into a "nexus of waste and revenue loss," according to the report by Natural Resource Governance Institutes (NRGI), a non-profit.
An explosion hit Turkey's Shah Deniz pipeline carrying natural gas from Azerbaijan early on Tuesday but there was no impact on supply because the flow was already suspended for maintenance, a senior Turkish energy official said. It was not immediately clear what caused the blast, but it comes days after an attack by the PKK Kurdish militant group halted the flow in a pipeline carrying crude oil to Turkey from Iraq.
An Aberdeen-based energy service firm said yesterday it is targeting opportunities in regions “less affected” by the low oil price after revealing 17 north-east job losses. LR Senergy said it was forced to cut costs after many of the projects it expected to win were postponed of abandoned amid the energy sector downturn. The firm laid off 37 members of its global workforce in the first quarter of the year, 17 of whom were based in the north-east, while 10 to 15 employees were transferred to operations outside the UK.
Oil slid to six-month lows on Monday, hit by fresh evidence of growing oversupply, investor bearishness and slowing demand in China, leaving crude prices on course for their weakest third-quarter performance since the financial crisis in 2008. A Reuters survey last week showed oil output by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reached the highest monthly level in recent history in July. Saudi Arabia and other key members are showing no sign of wavering in their focus on defending market share instead of prices, which have fallen 9 percent this year.
Romanian prosecutors have indicted Russia's Petrotel Lukoil refinery in Romania and its director-general, who is a Russian citizen, in a 2 billion euro criminal probe, prosecutors said in a statement on Monday.
Diamond Offshore Drilling, one of the world's top-five offshore rig contractors, reported a slightly higher quarterly profit, helped by demand for its high-tech ultra-deepwater rigs and a drop in operating costs. Demand is strong for modern, faster rigs because they are cheaper to run and can drill more efficiently for oil and gas companies, which have been cutting spending due to low prices. Diamond Offshore, owned 52 percent by New York-based conglomerate Loews, said on Monday that revenue from its ultra-deepwater business rose 72.8 percent to $315.7 million in the second quarter ended June 30.
OPEC member Algeria has increased crude oil output by 32,000 barrels per day after starting production at two fields, an energy ministry official said on Sunday. Production increased on Saturday when the Bir Sebaa field started producing 20,000 bpd in addition to 12,000 bpd from the Bir Msana field in Hassi Messaoud area, the official told Reuters. Algeria produced an average 1.1 million bpd in July, according to a Reuters survey.
Faroese oil firm Atlantic Petroleum is seeking buyers for all or parts of the company, it said on Monday, adding that it would otherwise have to raise cash to continue its current operations. The firm, headquartered in the Faroe Islands and listed in Copenhagen and Oslo, said in a statement it had hired bankers Pareto Securities to explore potential deals that could include a sale or merger of the firm or selling its British and Norwegian assets.
U.S. energy firms added 5 oil rigs this week after putting 21 rigs into service last week, the most in over a year, despite a collapse in U.S. crude prices from recent highs in June, data showed on Friday. That was a sign some drillers followed through on plans to add rigs announced in May and June when U.S. crude futures were averaging $60 a barrel. U.S. crude futures so far this week however have traded around $48. The rig count gain this week was the fourth increase in the past 34 weeks, bringing the total rig count up to 664, the highest early May, oil services company Baker Hughes Inc said in its closely followed report.
The European Union has removed two Iranian oil companies from its sanctions list, the first such action since Iran reached a nuclear agreement with world powers earlier this month, a notice from the British finance ministry said on Friday. Petropars Operation and Management and Petropars Resources Engineering had been pressing for their removal from a list of sanctioned companies for months on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to include them. The companies, which are the part of a group involved in extracting natural gas from Iran's South Pars field, appealed to the EU court in May to allow their removal from the list.
