Repsol has received approval from Canadian regulators to begin exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) from its Canaport import facility. The National Energy Board of Canada granted a 25-year permit to import as much as 312 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year by pipeline from the US and western Canada. It will then be converted to six million metric tons of LNG at a new on-site facility.
The last place oil producers want to be when prices plummet to profit-demolishing lows is midstream on a billion-dollar project in one of the costliest parts of the planet to extract crude. Yet that’s exactly where half a dozen oil sands operators from Suncor Energy Inc. to Brion Energy Corp. find themselves with prices for Canadian oil now hovering around $30 a barrel. While all around them projects have been postponed or canceled, their investments were judged too far along when the oil game suddenly moved from offense to defense. These projects will add at least another 500,000 barrels a day -- roughly a 25 percent increase from Alberta -- to an oversupplied North American market by 2017. For companies stuck spending billions in a downturn, the time required to earn back their investments will lengthen considerably, said Rafi Tahmazian, senior portfolio manager at Canoe Financial LP.
Canadian oil producer Iona Energy increased North Sea production in the second quarter to June.
The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB) has said that Husky Energy’s Development Plan Amendment for the White Rose Extension Project, offshore Newfoundland, has received conditional approval from the Board along with the federal and provincial governments.
Canadian producer Seven Generations Energy has suspended injection into the Alliance Pipeline after an "operational event" caused the pipeline company to call for natural gas suppliers to halt production.
Alberta's energy regulator is investigating the deaths of 30 blue herons at a Syncrude Canada oil sands site in the northern part of the Canadian province, the agency and company said on Saturday. The Alberta Energy Regulator said it sent investigators to the Syncrude Canada Mildred Lake site, which is about 40 km (25 miles) north of Fort McMurray. In 2010, Syncrude was fined C$3 million ($2.29 million) for negligence in the 2008 deaths of 1,600 ducks in a toxic tailings pond, a case that fueled international concern about the environmental impact of developing Canada's oil sands.
U.S. oil refiner PBF Energy is shipping a cargo of crude from Western Canada to supply its plant on the other side of the continent, a rare move traders say is a sign steep discounts for oil sands are upending age-old trade routes. The deal set the market abuzz on Wednesday with traders speculating about the status of the shipment of up to 500,000 barrels of crude. Two traders said PBF picked up a cargo coming from the Kearl oil sands projects operated by Imperial Oil in northern Alberta at a hefty discount.
Touchstone Exploration has disposed of its working interest in 1,166 hectares of undeveloped acreage in the Dodsland area of Saskatchewan for $4.2 million to a Canadian oil and gas producer.
SgurrEnergy has expanded their Canadian base to as it looks to reap rewards from the growing business opportunities in the region. The company has moved into Montreal and Toronto following a recent expansion in San Francisco and California. As a result two new appointments have also been made by SgurrEnergy to help lead the new bases in the country. The addition by the Wood Group firm will build from the existing offices in Vancouver, British Columbia, Austin and Portland.
Encana Corp ECA.TO ECA.N, Canada's largest natural gas producer, posted a second-quarter loss, compared with a year-ago profit, hurt by an impairment charge of about $1.3 billion.
CB&I said it has been awarded a contract worth $60million by a major energy company for maintenance services in Canada. The deal will see the company carry out work for three separate oil sands facilities in Alberta, Canada.
Truck driver Craig Huzulak is unemployed after losing his job four times since December -- the new normal in a Canadian oil patch still reeling from a downturn. Huzulak, 49, was working at a mine last year near Fort McMurray, Alberta, when crude prices plunged and work dried up. He lost two more positions in the following months and then had a job offer yanked at the end of June before he could even start. In addition to the market rout, the father of two now worries about the self-driving trucks Suncor Energy Inc. is rolling out in its oil-sands mining operations that will replace workers like him to save companies money. “It’s really, really hard for heavy-equipment operators,” said Huzulak, who has driven trucks and worked on drilling rigs in Western Canada for 15 years. “There’s a lot more fear now that this might last longer.”
The Baker Hughes weekly rig count has shown further promising results from Canada. The rig estimate, which has been in force for more than 50 years, is used to show the count overall worldwide, as well as internationally and in the US and Canada.
An investigation is underway after Nexen Energy had to shutdown a pipeline which leaked more than 30,000 barrels of emulsion. The company, a subsidiary of CNOOC, said the incident happened at its Long Lake oil sands facility. The pipeline and connecting pad site have since been isolated in a bid to stop the leak.
Eight months into OPEC’s plan to hit rival oil producers, the casualties are mounting. Surprisingly, the most resilient may be the one that triggered the fight: the US. Projections for combined daily output from Brazil, Canada, Russia, Mexico and Colombia by the end of the decade were cut by 2.8 million barrels since oil slumped last year, data from the countries and the International Energy Agency show. In contrast, the US Energy Department increased its estimate for crude output in 2020 by more than a million barrels. Prices fell more than 45 percent in the past year after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries refused to cut output, instead pressuring rival producers to eliminate a global supply glut.
A challenge by Canadian Pacific Railway over settlements for victims of a crude-buy-rail oil disaster has been rejected by a judge. The company has been subject to a class action lawsuit following the incident in which 47 people were killed and the main downtown region of a town were destroyed following the derailment of a train.
The Baker Hughes rig count showed promise as it was revealed the figures have risen slightly overall from the previous month. The rig estimate, which has been in force for more than 50 years, is used to show the count overall worldwide, as well as internationally and in the US and Canada.
Crescent Point Energy, Canada's No. 4 independent oil producer, said on Thursday it will acquire privately owned light oil producer Coral Hill Energy Ltd, operating in west central Alberta. The deal comes just days after Crescent Point's plan to buy another Canadian light oil producer, Legacy Oil + Gas, was approved by Legacy shareholders. "We are very pleased to have recently acquired Legacy Oil + Gas Inc and to acquire Coral Hill, as they both possess a large inventory of highly economic wells with significant waterflood upside," Scott Saxberg, chief executive of Crescent Point, said.
The era of the megaproject in Canada’s oil sands is fading. Crude’s price slump, pressure to get off fossil fuels and tax increases in Alberta are adding to high costs and a lack of pipelines, prompting producers from Suncor Energy Inc. to Imperial Oil Ltd. to accelerate a shift to smaller projects. Companies are deferring new mines in favor of cheaper, bite-sized drilling programs that deliver quicker returns and require less labor. The moves will help reduce cost overruns and make Canadian companies more competitive with U.S. shale producers. The trade off will be reduced production growth and a smaller economic boost for the country’s oil patch.
Canadian oilfield services provider Calfrac Well Services halved its quarterly dividend to 6.25 Canadian cents per share, citing lower crude oil prices and weak demand for oilfield services. Calfrac's board also approved an additional capital of about C$12 million for 2015 to expand in Latin America, the company said on Wednesday.
Alberta forest fires have prompted the shutdown of about 9 percent of Canada’s oil sands production. Cenovus Energy Inc. closed its 130,000-barrel Foster Creek operations and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. shut its 80,000-barrel-a-day Primrose project after a forest fire broke out on the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range in northeastern Alberta, the companies said.
Suncor Energy have reported a loss in earnings on the back on the oil price decline. Canada's largest oil and gas company said its net loss was $341million, compared to $1.49billion in the first quarter of 2014. Suncor has already reduced its headcount and spending to deal with the current climate.
Canada is seeking new customers for its crude oil as a U.S. review of the Keystone XL pipeline drags on and oil prices languish near $50 a barrel, the country’s Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford said. Canada sells nearly all of its oil and natural gas to the US, a partnership that amounts to a $140 billion a year business, Rickford said Tuesday at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Future of Energy Summit in New York. A downturn that has seen oil prices fall about 50 percent will cost Canada $40 billion a year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “Ninety nine percent of our oil goes to the United States right now - 98 percent of our natural gas,” Rickford said. “I don’t think anyone in business would want just one customer.”
A string of mass firings in the energy and retail industries is taking a toll on Canadians’ job security, recent polling suggests. The share of Canadians who say their employment isn’t fully secure rose last week to 15 percent, the highest since June 2013, according to a weekly survey by Nanos Research Group. The share who say their jobs are at least somewhat secure has declined to 68.9 percent, the lowest since early January. High-profile companies have recently announced closings and Canada’s unemployment rate is at a five-month high as the country copes with the plunge in oil prices and consolidation in the retail industry.
The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP), one of Canada's biggest investors, has said it is actively scouting for energy assets as it looks to trim positions in oil and gas derivatives and invest directly in producing assets. Chief investment officer Neil Petroff said: “We have our natural resource group out there looking for real assets. “The current price of oil, I think, gives us an opportunity to look for platform companies, where we can grow.