The Government has been accused of watering down rules preventing fracking in protected areas.
Ministers accepted Labour moves to tighten fracking regulations in the Infrastructure Bill by imposing a number of conditions, including banning the process from protected areas such as national parks and groundwater protection zones which feed aquifers.
But campaigners warned the Government’s new amendment to the Bill, which is now being considered by the Lords, has weakened the rules by allowing ministers to define what counts as protected groundwater source areas and other protected areas.
The new amendment also removed the rule preventing drilling underneath protected areas, environmentalists said.
Ivanhoe Energy has confimred the termination of a contract in Ecuador.
Ivanhoe and Petroamazonas agreed in August 2014to mutually terminate the Specific Services Contract under which Ivanhoe has been operating since 2008.
Real Energy will soon have an increased acreage in the Cooper Basin.
The oil and gas exploration company is set to aqcuire a permit that covers an area of 1,043 km2, increasing the firm's acrage postion in the field to 9,357 km2.
Energy minister Matthew Hancock has pledged to support the crisis-hit North Sea oil sector prompted by the dramatic fall in global prices.
He came under fire in the Commons today from Labour’s Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) who accused the Government of doing “very little”.
The MP called for the reduction in the additional taxation on the fuel and investment tax write-offs.
Cape said its SOCAR Cape joint venture has been awarded three significant contracts in Azerbaijan worth $65million.
The company will supply services to projects that are part of the development of the Shah Deniz field, a major natural gas development in the country.
The joint venture agreement with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) was signed in 2010 and is 51% owned by SOCAR and 49% owned by Cape.
Suncor Energy Inc., Canada’s largest oil company, will push ahead with its planned Fort Hills oil sands project even as the price of oil hovers around $50 a barrel.
Suncor will spend C$1.6 billion ($1.3 billion) this year as it advances construction of the project, the Calgary-based company said in a statement.The operation will begin producing oil at the end of 2017, the company added.
Weatherford will reduce its workforce by 9% - estimated to be around 5,000 jobs – as it looks to save costs.
The company said the job losses will be made to staff within its operation and support positions and are most likely to be made in the Western Hemisphere.
The move is in line with a number of companies, including BP and Schlumberger, who have announced a reduction in their headcounts.
OAO Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, will cut spending 10% this year after oil prices slumped.
“For the past year and a half we have cut spending by 10% annually, and this year this tendency will continue,” Rosneft Chief Executive Officer Igor Sechin told Russian President Vladimir Putin outside Moscow.
Chevron has acquired a 30% interest in three blocks in waters offshore Mauritania from Kosmos Energy.
The agreement, for blocks C8, C12 and C13 are subject to approval from the Mauritania government.
Under the agreement, Kosmos Energy will retain a 60% interest and remain as operator.
Petroleo Brasileiro SA Chief Executive Officer Maria das Gracas Foster and five of her top managers resigned amid a corruption probe that’s wiped out billions of dollars of the oil producer’s value and threatens Brazil’s economic revival.
Shares retreated after a two-day rally.
State-run Petrobras’s board of directors will meet Friday to elect replacements for Foster and her management team, it said in a one-sentence statement Wednesday.
Mosman Oil and Gas is expected to flow test one of its Petroleum Creek well in the next few weeks.
The news comes as a recent report on of the project identified valuable geological information including the identification of multiple distinct depositional layers.
Senex Energy has spudded the tenth well of its 2015 Australian drilling program.
The Martlet North-1 oil exploration well in the South Australian Basin was spudded on January 27, 2015.
As of January 28, some 12 E&A wells were active on the UKCS, representing an increase of two on last month.
Of these 12, four are exploration, the remaining eight appraisal; one West of Shetland, one in the Northern North Sea, two in the Southern North Sea and the lion’s share (eight) in the Central North Sea.
To date this year, three wells have spudded, while two side-tracks have also been started from wells that were initiated last year.
Zeta-pdm has landed a £750,000 contract for a land-based project in Malaysia.
The deal with MMC Oil and Gas Engineering will involve the supply of process internals for use in gas water separators, vessels used for separating a well stream into gaseous and liquid components.
Lamprell has completed construction and delivery of a jackup rig off the coast of India.
The Jindal Pioneer rig was contracted in January 2013 and is the second the firm has delivered to Singapore based Dev Drilling.
The massive drop in oil prices, combined with cost and cash flow issues among petroleum companies, is expected to exert further downward pressure on offshore jack-up and semi-submersible rig charters this year.
In a nutshell, a lot of rigs are going to become idle over the next couple of years. That will depress rig rates significantly.
According to analysts RS Platou, rig demand will slacken sharply, dropping an additional 30% based on a $75 oil price over and above last year’s decline.
President Energy has appointed North East Bedfordshire MP Alistair Burt as a non-executive director.
The 59-year-old politician was, until recently, Minister for the Middle East at the Foreign Office.
The US is setting up a new national research facility centred on Houston with the purpose of reducing the risk of offshore drilling oil spills and disasters.
A kick-off purse of $4million, drawn from monies paid by BP to the State of Texas as a result of the Macondo disaster has been made available to get the Subsea Systems Institute established.
That funding will be channelled through the RESTORE Act (Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities and Revived Economies of the Gulf Coast States), which is intended to provide funding for similar centres in the five states that were harmed by the BP oil spill.
Wood Group Kenny (WGK) has secured a contract with Woodside to provide the front end engineering design (FEED) of the flowline system on its North West Shelf (NWS) project in Western Australia.
The company will also provide associated procurement support on the proposed Greater Western Flank Phase 2 (GWF-2).
The primary engineering focus of the GWF-2 flowline FEED is to develop the flowline system for the final investment decision planned for the second half of 2015.
BP's former chief executive Lord Browne has warned costs in the North Sea must be reduced if it is to remain competitive within the global market.
Lord Browne, who led the oil giant for 12 years, said while there was "a lot of oil and gas left" in the North Sea, it was challenged by the expense in comparison to other regions.
The price of oil has halved since last year when it sat at $115 a barrel.
Statoil has appointed Eldar Saetre as its new chief executive following the departure of Helge Lund to BG Group last year.
Mr Saetre has been acting as chief executive and president of the Norwegian company since last October.
Statoil said his annual fixed salary will be 7.7 million NOK and Mr Saetre will participate in Statoil’s programs for annual variable pay and long term incentives, as previously established for the chief executive position.
BG Group warned of further job cuts and budget slashing yesterday as it also revealed it had wiped £4billion off the value of oil and gas assets globally to reflect the sharp fall in crude prices.
UK North Sea output was up by about 5% in 2014 as BG slumped to pre-tax losses of £1.5billion, from profits of £2.58million a year earlier. Revenue and other income was 2% higher at £12.9billion.
Ernst den Hartigh, managing director of European exploration and production, said: “We safely increased production for a second successive year. Our priorities for 2015 are to complete the offshore investment campaign we started last autumn and ensure we reduce operating costs to a more sustainable level.”
The US Environmental Protection Agency said developing Canadian oil sands would significantly increase greenhouse gases, a conclusion one environmental group said gives President Barack Obama reason to reject the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
“Until ongoing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of oil sands are more successful and widespread,” developing oil sands crude “represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions,” the EPA said Tuesday in a letter to the State Department, which is reviewing the project.
Long-standing UK North Sea trade union leader, Jake Molloy of the RMT, is warning bosses against sacrificing the workforce or compromising safety in their re-found zeal to slash costs in the face of collapsed oil prices coupled with a fiscal regime judged unfit for purpose.
He accuses managers of not learning from the past, being short-sighted, of destroying hard-won trust among the workforce and warns that offshore safety will be compromised.
Not only that, such actions will cost the industry dear in financial terms.
