Oil giant Total plans to sell North Sea assets and may consider Aberdeen job cuts unless prices rise and taxes are cut.
Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne said the firm was not proposing upstream redundancies, but that it was slashing UK investment, and may "need less staff" if it continues.
He was speaking to journalists in London after the Paris-based company announced its net adjusted profit fell 17% to $2.8 billion in the quarter, compared with the same period a year ago.
BP’s former chief executive Lord Browne has called on ministers to scrap a supplementary tax on North Sea oil and gas revenues.
Lord Browne warned the plunge in oil prices had done “permanent damage” to the mature fields in the region.
He warned that while the North Sea was still producing plenty of oil and gas, the price decline meant “we are now seeing the late evening of the North Sea.”
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has been urged by the oil and gas industry to use next month’s budget to roll back the 30% levy.
United Steelworkers and Royal Dutch Shell Plc will resume labor negotiations in a week amid the largest U.S. refinery strike in more than three decades.
A north-east MP has said a “compulsory” jobs scheme is needed to protect young workers in the region during the North Sea downturn.
Dame Anne Begg, the Aberdeen South MP, highlighted concerns about the oil price drop during a debate in the Commons yesterday.
Labour want an initiative where anyone under 25 who has been receiving Jobseekers Allowance for a year, and anyone over 25 who has been receiving it for two years, would be offered a paid job or face losing benefits.
North-east engineering company Ace Winches has beefed up its boardroom team as it eyes growth in international markets.
The firm, based at Towie Barclay Works, near Turriff, officially unveiled Colin Black as its new chief commercial officer yesterday, although he joined Ace late last year.
He was previously managing director and vice-president of Aberdeen-based oil and gas service firm Optima Solutions UK.
KCA Deutag has announced plans to cut up to 230 jobs in Aberdeen as it grapples with a slowdown in North Sea drilling.
Overall the drilling contractor said 500 jobs across its business spanning 20 countries were “at risk”, while it would also cut staff wages by 5% across the board. The company employs 10,000 worldwide and 1,200 in its North Sea offshore business.
Revealing the plans to staff at its Altens base this afternoon, the firm said it would launch a consultation on its plan to cut 30 office jobs and 200 offshore roles after two of its North Sea clients “pause drilling operations”.
OAO Gazprom, Russia’s largest company, has the strength to weather the country’s economic crisis, according to its chief financial officer.
The state-run gas exporter cut its debt by 10% last year, has a cash pile of about $20billion and is benefiting from the ruble’s declines, Gazprom’s Andrey Kruglov said.
Trapoil confirmed it would relinquish its North Sea "Orchid" license after failing to secure a potential farm-out.
The firm's board decided to cut its losses after licence P.1556 Block 29/1c became too expensive to maintain.
Tullow Oil Plc, an Africa-focused UK explorer that’s lost half its value in a year, swung to a loss in 2014 because of declining oil prices. It suspended its dividend.
The company had a net loss of $1.56billion, compared with a profit of $169million a year earlier, after writing off the value of assets, Tullow said. That exceeded the average estimate for a $1.17billion loss of 11 analysts in a Bloomberg survey.
Oil producers outside OPEC and US shale fields are getting caught in the confrontation over market supremacy that has brought crude prices to near six-year lows.
High-cost regions from aging North Sea fields to untapped resources in East Siberia and deep-water projects off Latin America will suffer the most from the clash, say Standard Chartered Plc, Citigroup Inc. and BNP Paribas SA.
A Spanish takeover of Talisman Energy and its 50% stake in a struggling UK joint venture is “on track” to complete during the first half of 2015.
Talisman insisted yesterday the £5.3billion deal struck with Spain’s Repsol in December was unaffected by hefty losses in the North Sea as oil prices nose-dived last year.
The Canadian company said its UK partnership with China’s Sinopec suffered net losses of £622million in the fourth quarter of 2014 and £692million over the whole of last year as a result of lower oil prices and higher decommissioning and development cost estimates.
Its final quarter figure included after-tax write-downs totalling £416million for Talisman’s share alone and resulted in a £122million funding charge in the Calgary-based company’s 2014 results.
Scotland’s future will be “poor and cold” unless it takes steps to replace the offshore oil industry with onshore shale gas fracking, an expert has claimed.
Economist Gordon Hughes, an Edinburgh University professor and former World Bank advisor, suggested that efforts to tackle social injustice in Scotland will be put at risk unless the controversial energy resource is developed.
At the same event yesterday, a boss at the giant Grangemouth petrochemicals plant warned that its future would be plunged into fresh doubt without a local shale gas industry.
A key oil and gas industry asset which has operated in the north-east for nearly 30 years has just been sold in a deal potentially worth £4.5million.
Marine service group James Fisher and Sons said yesterday it had bought the National Hyperbaric Centre (NHC) in Ashgrove Road West, Aberdeen.
The facility was previously owned and run by managing director David Smith, who took it over in 2005, together with business partner Tom Brannan, with the aim of creating a worldwide centre of expertise.
Babcock International’s David Goodfellow is leading the defence giant’s move into North Sea oil and gas at what could be considered an interesting time for the sector.
At Rosyth Dockyard, Babcock International is almost three-quarters of the way through building 74 subsea structures that will extend the life of BP’s Schiehallion and Loyal fields West of Shetland.
The £30million contract on BP’s “Quad204” project was one of the largest of its kind, and it is a deliberate move by Babcocks into diversifying its order books.
The North Sea is facing a potential economic triple-whammy and may need to make “complex and difficult” changes in light of the plummeting price of oil, a new report has warned.
The sector is in a “painful situation” as a result of low oil prices being “sustained for longer than anticipated”, the PwC report said.
The authors warned that continued falling prices could lead to less investment, culminating in accelerated decommissioning at oil fields.
The report argued there could still be long-term opportunities for the UK’s oil and gas industry, but added that companies would need to “transform the way they operate to meet the challenge”.
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has signed a technical agreement with Occidental Petroleum to develop the al-Hail and Ghasha oil fields.
ADNOC holds a 70% share in the fields development venture, while Occidental holds the remaining 30%.
Falcon Crest Energy has acquired the remaining working interest in the recently acquired leasehold Rocky Ford field, Wyoming.
The company had leased federal lands from the United States Bureau of Land Management last year.
Falcon initially retained a 75% working interest in 584.78acres in the Rocky Ford Field but converted the remaining working interest holders into a royalty position.
Dana Petroleum has completed drilling of the Lille John-2 appraisal well and side-track on the Lille John oil field in the Danish North Sea.
The appraisal well and side-track confirmed the presence of sweet, light oil in the Late Miocene sandstone reservoir.
The company said the thickness and quality of the sandstone reservoir encountered in LJ-2 was found, as expected, to be improved relative to the LJ-1 discovery well drilled in 2011.
CAMAC Energy has completed its onshore seismic acquisition on blocks L-1B and L-16 in Kenya.
The 2D seismic programme was conducted by BGP Kenya and covers 700 kilometres on L-1B and 325km on L-16.
The objective of the acquisition is to identify potential exploration targets in the Paleozoic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Middle to Lower Tertiary sections, which are known to be oil-bearing in the East Africa region.
CNOOC has signed two production sharing contracts with SK Innovation for Blocks 04/20 and 17/03 in the South China Sea.
The two blocks are located in the Pearl River Mouth Basin in water depths of between 50-100 metres.
Inspection, maintenance and repair specialist N-Sea has launched its third diving support vessel.
The Edradour represents a £1.5million investment for the company and will be utilised in the company’s IMR operations in the North Sea, as well as in Holland and Germany.
Scotland’s largest petrochemical plant at Grangemouth is unlikely to have a long-term future unless an indigenous shale gas industry can be developed, according to the firm that owns it.
Chemicals giant Ineos proposes using shale gas as a raw material for its chemicals plants, and has revealed plans to put millions into exploration.
But developing the industry could be stalled or even prevented after the Scottish Government announced a moratorium on granting planning consents for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” - the means of extracting the gas.
Beset by falling prices, the oil industry is looking at about 50,000 existing wells in the U.S. that may be candidates for a second wave of fracking, using techniques that didn’t exist when they were first drilled.
New wells can cost as much as $8 million, while re-fracking costs about $2 million, significant savings when the price of crude is hovering close to $50 a barrel, according to Halliburton Co., the world’s biggest provider of hydraulic fracturing services.
While re-fracking offered mixed results in the past, earning it the nickname “pump and pray,” the oil crash is forcing companies to pursue new technologies to produce oil more cheaply.
