Ukraine expects to store enough natural gas for next winter despite cutting off imports from Russia and Russian flows crossing the country destined for Europe will not be disrupted, Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn said on Thursday.
State energy firm Naftogaz stopped buying gas from Russia's Gazprom on Wednesday after energy ministers from Kiev and Moscow failed to agree on quarterly prices.
"The suspension of deliveries will not affect the safety or transportation of gas (to Europe) ... or preparation for the new heating season," Demchyshyn said.
The Environment Secretary has been urged to apologise to communities facing fracking for “holding back” evidence of the risks of shale exploration in rural areas.
And campaigners have called for fracking to be put on hold in the UK while a “genuinely independent, qualified body” reviews all the risks associated with the controversial process of extracting gas and oil.
A draft report from the Environment Department (Defra) said fracking could reduce house prices, increase traffic, produce deafening noise for residents and damage the landscape in rural communities.
Norway's Statoil and Lithuania's Lietuvos Energija plan to join forces to develop a small-scale liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply operation, competing with Finnish gas utility Gasum.
Litgas, an LNG arm of state-owned Lietuvos Energija, and Statoil signed a preliminary agreement on Thursday to establish a joint venture by the end of 2015, Litgas said in a statement.
Statoil has a contract with Litgas to deliver 0.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year to Lithuania's LNG terminal at Klaipeda port in 2014.
A £20million programme of seismic surveys in the UK continental shelf will get under way within weeks, the energy industry’s regulator said today in Aberdeen.
The programme − announced in the last Budget − is aimed at stoking North Sea drilling, which is currently at an all-time low.
Gunther Newcombe, director of exploration and production at the Oil and Gas Authority, said the surveys would cover an expanse of 15,000 to 20,000 kilometres with data slated for release in the second quarter of 2016.
Union leaders have urged oil workers to back proposals from firms over new shift patterns.
In a letter obtained by our sister paper the Evening Express, the GMB union has proposed to members that three weeks on and three weeks off should be implemented offshore.
Refiners in South Korea, the world's fifth-largest crude oil importer, have stepped up spot purchases this year, buying at prices depressed by an oil glut as they run their plants at high rates to catch strong processing margins.
With the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other producers keeping crude taps open in spite of soft global demand growth, tens of millions of unbought barrels have built up in floating storage sites and dragged down international oil markets.
Still, the profit earned on turning a barrel of Dubai crude into fuel have held at $7.50-$9 a barrel this year - well above annual averages since at least 1997 - as crude benchmarks dipped to multi-year lows, sparking consumer demand for gasoline and naphtha.
Oilfield services company Hunting said it expected a 50 percent to 75 percent fall in operating profit for the year as it continued to reel under a drop in global rig counts and a weak oil and gas market.
Hunting shares fell more than 7 percent on the London Stock Exchange on Thursday morning. The stock was the top loser on the FTSE-250 midcap index.
The Norwegian government has modified an original proposal on how to divide up stakes in the Johan Sverdrup field in the North Sea, giving Det norske a smaller stake than originally proposed, it said on Thursday.
Sverdrup, Europe's costliest offshore energy project, contains up to 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and could operate for 50 years. It is forecast to start production by the end of 2019.
Four out of five shareholders, including operator Statoil, agreed in February on how to divide up the project, but Det norske disputed the agreement, asking for a government review.
Noreco has cut ties with its joint venture partners in Denmark.
The firm confirmed it forfeited its licences and participating interests in the Nini and Cecile oilfields.
Integrated subsea services firm Harkand said yesterday it has adapted a support vessel to keep busy against the backdrop of the oil and gas industry downturn.
The Spearfish craft has been switched from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Sea and fitted with a hydraulic gangway that provides workers with safe access to platforms.
The vessel, which is on long-term charter Norway’s Siem Offshore, normally supports subsea construction projects, but is now supporting Premier Oil’s commissioning work on the £960million Solan project west of Shetland.
Mexico has outlined plans to auction 244 onshore and offshore oil fields over the next five years in a bid to recover one million barrels of production by 2025.
A Braskem SA shareholder sued the petrochemical company for securities fraud in a case tied to Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as litigation in the U.S. over the Brazilian energy company’s bribery scandal expands to customers.
Petrobras sells naphtha to Braskem, Latin America’s largest petrochemical maker. The material, the main ingredient for making petrochemicals, is sold under long-term agreements between the two firms, according to investor Douglas Peters. Petrobras has been accused of involvement in a bribery scheme that has rocked Brazil’s economy and triggered lawsuits in the U.S.
The insurance protecting shale drillers against plummeting prices has become so crucial that for one company, SandRidge Energy Inc., payments from the hedges accounted for a stunning 64 percent of first-quarter revenue.
Now the safety net is going away.
The insurance that producers bought before the collapse in oil -- much of which guaranteed minimum prices of $90 a barrel or more -- is expiring. As they do, investors are left to wonder how these companies will make up the $3.7 billion the hedges earned them in the first quarter after crude sunk below $60 from a peak of $107 in mid-2014.
Fracking could reduce house prices, increase traffic and noise and damage the landscape in rural communities, according to a heavily-redacted Government report which has now been published in full.
Oilfield services giant Expro International confirmed it has shelved a potential £3billion IPO of the business as it revealed it raised £225million of new equity from existing shareholders.
Turkey and Russia's Gazprom are likely to finalise a deal on natural gas prices by mid-July, Turkish officials told Reuters, after Ankara warned last week it could seek international arbitration if they failed to agree.
Russia, which supplies more than half the gas consumed by Turkey annually, has already agreed to cut prices by 10.25 percent, but Gazprom's additional demands regarding the Turkish Stream natural gas project are delaying the final signature, a Turkish energy official said.
Last week, Turkey said it had the right to take Gazprom to international arbitration if there we no agreement by June 29. Ankara already has a case at the court against Iran, its second biggest supplier.
Royal Dutch Shell has been granted permission to develop the Appomattox deepwater oil and gas field in the Gulf of Mexico, set to be the energy giant's largest floating platform in the region.
The Appomattox project, 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana, is expected to reach peak production of around 175,000 barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day, Shell said in a statement on Wednesday.
