Oil major Chevron said it had reduced its 2016 budget by 25% as well as laying off around 10% of its workforce. The company said it plans to spend between $25billion to $28billion next year. It will also reduce its spending in 2017 and 2018, an acknowledgement that oil prices are not expected to rise drastically in the next few years.
Apache's announcement of new discoveries which could hold up to 70million barrels of oil equivalent will be "extremely welcome", says Industry expert Professor Alex Kemp. The petroleum economist made the comments after the US explorer revealed five new discovery wells had been uncovered. Apache said two discoveries were made on two exploration wells in the Beryl area as well as further discovery 50 miles south of the company’s Forties field.
Apache said it has made significant discoveries in the North Sea in both the Beryl and Forties field which could up to 70million barrels of oil equivalent. The US explorer said two discoveries were made on two exploration wells in the Beryl area as well as further discovery 50 miles south of the company’s Forties field. Apache said it also drilled two development wells in the Beryl area from which no reserves have previously been booked.
Husky Energy Inc. plans to keep cutting jobs after eliminating 1,400 positions, the most disclosed by a Canadian energy company in the oil-price slump. Job cuts have represented 80 percent contractors and 20 percent employees and will continue, Husky said in a statement Friday, reporting its biggest-ever quarterly loss. The Canadian producer and refiner controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka- Shing also outlined plans to pay its dividend in stock, consider asset sales and extend a companywide salary freeze started at the end of 2014. The shares fell 5.5 percent to C$19.16 at 9:36 a.m. in Toronto.
A stubborn 16-month crude rout with no end in sight is driving the largest US oil producers away from costly, high-risk mega-projects long touted as the industry’s future and toward safer shale operations that generate the cash needed to satisfy anxious investors.
Iran may roil global oil markets with plans to sell about 45 million barrels of fuel stored in tankers in the Persian Gulf within three months of the removal of sanctions on its economy, according to analysts. Most of the stored oil is condensate that contains a sulfur compound, which complicates sales because many refineries can’t process it, said Victor Shum of IHS Inc. and Robin Mills at Dubai-based Manaar Energy Consulting. To market this large amount of oil within three months -- the equivalent of about half a million barrels a day -- Iran will have to resort to offering deep discounts, they said. “Iran’s getting ready to open the taps,” Shum, IHS’s head of oil market research, said by phone on Oct. 26. “If they want to unwind this supply in the current weak market, they’ll have to offer discounts. It’s a buyer’s market.”
ConocoPhillips has been ordered by a Chinese court to pay compensation to nearly two dozen aquaculture farmers who said their livelihoods had been hurt by oil spills off the country’s north eastern coast four years ago. The company was told to pay $266,000 to 21 farmers who had not previously participated in a previous settlement in 2012.
Statoil and joint venture partners have submitted a winning bid on the A5-A block offshore Mozambique in the fifth competitive bidding round.
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.
Centrica Enery Norway has awarded Aibel a frame agreement for field development projects on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The company said all project phases have been included in the deal including various study phases and pre-engineering work.
The Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) has completed the first stage of the UK Government’s £20million seismic campaign. The industry regulator said 20,000km of high-quality data had been acquired in under explored areas of the UKCS. The programme was completed by Schlumberger company, WesternGeco,on October 11th with almost 20,000km of new 2D seismic lines acquired over an area of 200,000km.
ConocoPhillips said the company will stop searching for oil and gas in deepwater fields by 2017 as well as selling offshore leases it doesn’t intend to drill. The company said the move will help free up $800million in capital, the same amount which has been estimated for exploration next year. Earlier this week Conoco revealed its capital budget for the year would be cut to $10.2billion, in response to continued low oil prices.
GE Oil & Gas will acquire Advantec as it looks to improve the company’s capabilities of offering cost-efficient production and services. The company said the move is part of its wider efforts to address the challenges faced by its customers operating the growing number of mature subsea fields. Advantec will operate under its existing name and management team as part of GE Oil & Gas’ subsea services and offshore division.
88 Energy's highly anticipated Icewine #1 project in Alaska is progressing according to plan, the company said in a drilling update.
Mosman, the Australasia focussed oil exploration and development company, raised an additional £1.47million from US investors as it seeks to bring 12 low cost assets to production on its South Taranaki Energy Project (Step) assets in New Zealand.
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.
BG Group has posted its third quarter results and said it remains on track for its takeover by oil major Shell to be completed early next year. The company reported a third-quarter decline in profit of 63% as it feels the force of the oil price decline. Net income fell to $280million form $759million a year previously. Meanwhile BG said its exploration and production was up 26% while full year guidance has increased to between 680-700kboed.
Big US oil companies are starting to think small. A stubborn 16-month crude rout with no end in sight is driving the largest US oil producers away from costly, high- risk megaprojects long touted as the industry’s future and toward safer shale operations that generate the cash needed to satisfy anxious investors. Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips and Hess Corp. have all either delayed or abandoned projects that range from the deep seas of the Gulf of Mexico to Canada’s oil sands and the US Arctic. At the same time, Exxon and Chevron both announced plans to substantially increase US crude production, largely as a result of their shale operations.
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.
Brazil will lead global growth in the Floating Production, Storage and Offloading vessel (FPSO) industry despite the country’s national oil company, Petrobras, recently facing allegations of corruption, according to research and consulting firm GlobalData.
North Sea helicopter operator Bristow has completed its first wave of headcount reductions as it looks to streamline costs. The company announced in July it would be cutting up to 130 positions – including 66 pilots – in jobs across the UK. Earlier this month, CHC said it had let 18 members of staff go amid a challenging market place with the global decline in oil price.
Maven Capital Partners has injected £5.4million into an energy engineering firm that has successfully diversified from oil and gas to the off and onshore wind sector. GEV Group, which has an office in Aberdeen, will use the funds to support its “impressive growth plans”, Maven said. Maven said the investment means GEV is well positioned to capitalise on the projected growth in wind power, driven by global emissions and fossil fuel reduction targets.
Noble Energy has plugged and abandoned its Humpback well in waters off the coast of Falkland after non-commercial quantities of oil and gas were discovered. The company said a full assessment and integration of drilling results was on-going to determine the remaining exploration potential in the southern area license. Noble said the rig which drilled the Humpback well will be released to another operator before returning to the company to spud the Rhea prospect later this year or early next year.
McDermott said its joint venture project in Ghana has received regulatory approval. The company is working on the McDermott Marine Construction Ghana Limited venture to pursue key offshore opportunities in Ghana. The announcement was made by officials from the joint venture during Africa Oil Week in Cape Town.
Oil major Chevron said it has made a “significant discovery” after the appraisal of the Anchor discovery in the Gulf of Mexico. The original discovery well, which is located 140 miles off the coast of Louisiana, was drilled in late last year to a depth of 33,750feet and encountered 690feet of net oil pay. The appraisal drilling began in June this year and Chevron said complete appraisal of the field will require further delineation wells and technical studies.