Engineering services firm Penspen has been awarded a contract worth $4.3million from Gas Transmission Company Limited (GTCL), under the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources of Bangladesh.
Ophir Energy said it has launched its two-well exploration programme in Thailand after spudding of the first wildcat. The company said it had spudded the G4/50-10 exploration well on the Soy Siam prospect in the western Gulf of Thailand. The block partly surrounds Ophir's producing Bualuang oil field and spans a series of Tertiary aged sub-basins in the region.
Platts, the commodities price-reporting agency, may decide soon after Oct. 30 to make changes to the formula of the benchmark for much of the Middle Eastern crude sold to Asia as it seeks to stay competitive with China planning to introduce its own contract. The agency is considering adding two crudes to the three grades it uses in calculating the Dubai oil benchmark, which determines prices for almost 30 million barrels a day in exports to Asia, said Dave Ernsberger, its global editorial director for oil. Platts seeks to ensure liquidity amid rising demand from Asia, especially China, which plans to introduce a futures contract this year.
North Sea workers have urged their employers to enter into proper talks with staff as the result of a ballot on industrial action looms. Catering and auxillary staff plan to protest outside a number of offices across Aberdeen today after COTA (Catering Offshore Trade Association) said it wouldn't pay the second year of a deal which would see a 1.3% rise in wages. The body is made up of six companies – Aramark, Entier, ESS, FOSS & ESG, Sodexo and Trinity International Services – which supply catering and auxiliary services offshore.
Trinity Exploration & Production has struck a deal to sell a number of its onshore assets in Trinidad and Tobago to Touchstone Exploration in a $20.8million deal. The UK-listed company said the move comes after a strategic review was undertaken earlier this year.
Australian independent Oilex has commenced a work-over campaign at its Cambay project in India.
Centrica Energy Norway and its partners will develop the Butch discovery in the North Sea as a subsea tie-in to the Ula field. Several options had been evaluated for the field which was discovered four years ago in the Norwegian part of the North Sea. Two options – a tie-in or standalone production jack-up solution – were assessed for the site which has estimated recoverable reserves of between 27million and 51 million barrels of oil equivalent.
Sound Energy has signed a memorandum of understanding with Schlumberger oilfield holdings for a strategic relationship between the two companies in Europe and Africa. The non-binding term agreement represents the first preliminary agreement to be entered into under the MOU.
The Buzzard oilfield in the North Sea has begun ramping up production once again after a four-day outage. The operator Nexen said the field, which is the largest contributor to the Forties crude oil stream, was coming back online after it was shut down last week. Buzzard produces about 186,000 barrels per day (bpd).
UK Oil and Gas (UKOG) said it has received an oil in place (OIP) evaluation from US specialist Nutech which shows more than 15 billion barrels of oil could lie within the Weald basin area. The company said it had asked Nutech to conduct its study over eight of the licence area in which it has interest in Southern England. Nutech estimated 15.7billion barrels could lie within three Jurassic shale and interbedded limestone tight oil plays underlying the eight licence areas in the Weald basin.
After a year suffering the economic consequences of the oil price slump, OPEC is finally on the cusp of choking off growth in U.S. crude output. The nation’s production is almost back down to the level pumped in November, when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries switched its strategy to focus on battering competitors and reclaiming market share. As the US wilts, demand for OPEC’s crude will grow in 2015, ending two years of retreat, the International Energy Agency estimates. While cratering prices and historic cutbacks in drilling have taken their toll on the US, OPEC members have also paid a heavy price. A year of plunging government revenues, growing budget deficits and slumping currencies has left several members grappling with severe economic problems. The fact that the US oil boom kept going for about six months after the group’s November decision also means OPEC has so far succeeded only in bringing the market back to where it started.
Weatherford International Plc shareholders are asking the company for one thing this quarter: Please, just be a little more boring. Over the last decade, the oilfield services provider has missed analyst estimates 20 times, settled a corruption probe and spent more than $150 million in professional fees to fix errors in its accounting. And last month, it abandoned plans to raise $1 billion for an acquisition just hours after announcing them. Now the company is seeking to build investor trust amid the worst oil market slump in decades. Chief Executive Officer Bernard Duroc-Danner needs to manage day-to-day activities in a way that will, for the first time in five years, generate more cash than the company spends, said David Anderson, an analyst at Barclays in New York. It’s a target Weatherford set for itself last year but failed to reach.
A UK Government minister has highlighted the "vital" need to maximise the North Sea's economic recovery to protect Britain's ongoing energy security. Energy minister Andrea Leadsom said continued exploration and investment in the oil and gas sector would be crucial. She was asked about the package of measures announced by Chancellor George Osborne in his March Budget during the Commons energy and climate change committee meeting yesterday.
A global decline in the oil price since last year may have hindered upstream business in regions such as the UKCS. But for Hungary's MOL Group, the lower oil price has prompted an unexpected boost in its downstream operations. David Pullan, group downstream development senior vice president for the company, told delegates at the Central Eastern Europe and Turkey Refinery Summit in Budapest his side of the business had seen "very good" results. In the third part of our week long series from MOL's headquarters in Hungary, we look to its successes in its downstream business.
Chesapeake Energy has been fined $2.1million for alleged under reporting on natural gas produced on Indian leases in Oklahoma, according to reports. The Department of Interior's Office of Natural Resources Revenue Office said it had issued a civil penalty against the Oklahoma city-based company for failing to comply with an October 2011 order requiring it to review the amounts reported for more than 100 leases.
Nighthawk said an internal review of its current cost structure would result in a number of staffing changes. The oil development and production company said many of the improvement would begin to come into play later this year. The move includes consolidation of financing and accounting functions in its Denver offices as well as a number of job changes.
Oil major BP has signed a deal worth $350million to sell products storage assets in the US to Kinder Morgan. The move includes 15 refined product terminals and associated infrastructure in the United States. Following the agreement, the companies will form a joint venture limited liability firm terminal business to own 14 of the acquired assets which will be operated by Kinder Morgan.
Schlumberger has signed a 15-year deal with Energy Recovery which grants it exclusive rights to Energy Recovery’s VorTeq hydraulic pumping system.
Pilot Energy said it has confirmed the potential for millions of barrels of oil from its WA-507-P permit after an independent audit. The company previously announced the potential for multi-Tcf gas discoveries within the North Carnarvon basin off the coast of Australia.
MEO Australia has reached a commercial settlement to allow a 30% joint venture participant withdraw from its farm-in to the WA-488-P exploration permit. The company said the deal had been reached with Rex Bonparte after it was recently informed of changes to its management strategy. Rex plans to focus on its key discovery assets in Norway and Oman instead.
Statoil has reduced its spending on the Johan Castberg field by an estimated 30%. According to reports in Norwegian media, the Norwegian operator is still on target for a concept decision next year. The company’s vice president for field development Erik Strand Tellefsen told a seminar costs had been reduced through multiple processes on the project.
Iran’s oil minister sees no imminent change in OPEC’s output strategy even as he urged fellow members of the group to cut their collective production to buoy crude to a range of $70 to $80 a barrel. Iran is preparing to ramp up its own output once world powers remove sanctions on its economy, regardless of any decisions by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh told reporters Monday at an industry conference in Tehran. “No one is happy” with prices at current levels, he said. “OPEC should decide to manage the market by reducing the level of production,” Zanganeh said. “It seems that the atmosphere is not well for making a change in the market.”
NSRI (National Subsea Research Initiative) is leading computer industry-style hackathons that it hopes will lead to ideas that can help unlock up to 1.5 billion barrels of oil from the North Sea.
Genel Energy said it had reached a turning point as it marked the beginning of stabilised payments for its oil by the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq.
Enegi Oil, the independent oil and gas company, has appointed Dr Nigel Burton as its new chief executive.