Top shale oil producer Pioneer Natural Resources has found an unusual way to both save water and cut costs for its wells: tapping the treated runoff from toilets, sinks and showers in west Texas.
Pioneer has signed an 11-year, $117 million deal with the city of Odessa, Texas that will guarantee it access to millions of gallons of treated municipal wastewater each day, for use in nearby oilfields. Deliveries of the so-called effluent, are expected to start at the end of the year.
As crude oil has slid to its lowest level in six years -currently about $40 a barrel - oil and gas companies pumping from shale rock have tried to cut every unnecessary penny from their operations. Water acquisition and transportation can be up to 10 percent of the cost of drilling and fracking a well, according to consulting firm IHS.
West Indies oil exploration company LGO has hit back at what it calls "misleading allegations" made by Trinity Exploration over a $2million slice of oil territory in Trinidad.
Statoil's record-breaking Polarled gas pipeline has become the first to cross the Arctic Circle, opening a new "gas highway" from the Norwegian Sea to Europe.
United States President Barack Obama promised Democrat politicians the US will continue to put economic pressure on Iran - and keep military options open - if his administration’s nuclear deal with Tehran goes through.
Power supplier APR Energy has made progress in clawing back payments and equipment from terminated projects in the Middle East - which is likely to help its upcoming half-year results.
Santos Ltd., Australia’s third-largest oil and gas producer, posted an 82 percent slump in first-half profit after a fall in oil prices.
Net income fell to A$37 million ($27 million) in the six months ending in June, from A$206 million a year earlier, the Adelaide-based company said Friday in a statement. That compared with an estimate of A$41 million from Macquarie Group Ltd.
A takeover bid by the Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC) for Dragon Oil has almost been completed.
The company said its shares will be delisted from both the Dublin and London traded exchanges next month.
The US stock market endured its worst performance in 18 months, driven lower by another slump in Chinese shares and heavy selling by technical traders.
The global rout started in China, where sharp declines in energy and property stocks pushed the Shanghai Composite down more than 3%.
That selling soon spread to European and US markets, where the Standard & Poor’s 500 index moved further below a closely watched trading level.
With WTI on the precipice of breaking below $40/bbl, chatter abounds on just how low oil prices can go from here, with some discussing prices in the low $30s, or potentially lower.
While this type of price action is not without possibility, Bentek does not believe this is rooted in fundamentals, but rather, would be a short term phenomenon spurred by speculative trade capitulation and/or a brief storage shock.
In terms of the former, should the paper losses from traders holding long positions in oil become too difficult to bear, the market has the potential for a short term rout if/when there is a liquidation of positioning.
Santos Ltd. Chief Executive Officer David Knox will step down after seven years in the role as the Australian oil producer reviews its options amid a plunge in crude prices, the company said Friday.
Knox will depart once a successor has been named, the Adelaide-based company said in a statement after reporting an 82 percent drop in first-half profit.
The slide in oil prices has put pressure on Santos as the company prepares to start its $18.5 billion liquefied natural gas project in Queensland state. The Australian energy producer has cut spending and jobs while flagging the possibility of asset sales as it copes with the oil market downturn. Santos shares have fallen 62 percent in the last year.
Mexico has concluded its vast oil hedging program for next year, paying more than $1 billion to guarantee it will get at least $49 a barrel for about half of its exported crude in 2016.
Announcing the unusually early completion of the biggest sovereign oil derivatives trade in the world, Mexico's finance ministry said late on Wednesday it had bought options based on Maya and Brent crude oil prices that will cover 212 million barrels of oil, at a cost of $1.09 billion.
Mexico is "very unlikely" to reopen the hedge, a source close to the operation told Reuters, adding the program centered on Maya crude. Counterparties to the program included Barclays and JPMorgan, the source added.
Russia's Eurasia Drilling on Thursday reported a first-half net profit of $91 million, down by half on a weak rouble, low oil prices and lower demand from top customer Lukoil.
Eurasia, in which Schlumberger is awaiting Russia's permission to buy a 45.65 percent stake, said revenue fell by 40 percent to $923 million.
DNO saw a profits boost in the second quarter of the year up from the previous three months.
The Norwegian oil and gas operator said there had been an increase from $26million to $55million while its net loss was $40million for the second quarter.
The company has also hit record production levels from the Tawke field in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq with output averaging 153,346 barrels of oil per day (bopd).
Electromagnetic Geoservices (EMGS) said it has reduced its headcount by 20% as well as reducing its fleet down to three vessels as it looks to make cost savings.
The company said its revenues were down to $12.1million from $42.5million the same time a year earlier.
Contract sales ended at $4.8million while sales from the multi-client library ended at $7.3million.
Never was the transition from one industrial age to another more starkly illustrated than in this edition of the north-east of Scotland’s best-selling newspaper in April 1970.
Crude markets already in a downward spiral sank under the weight of a supply report showing increasing stockpiles of oil after a major U.S. Midwest refinery shutdown.
And the oversupply may just be getting started.
A heavy slate of refinery maintenance in the region this fall threatens to make inventory builds in Cushing, Oklahoma, a common occurrence. The outages will follow trouble at BP Plc’s Whiting refinery in Indiana that meant about 1.5 million barrels of oil didn’t get consumed last week.
“There is a lot of maintenance scheduled in the fall,” said John Auers, senior vice president at Turner Mason & Co., a Dallas-based energy consultancy. “Having a lot of plants down for turnarounds tends to push us into an oversupply situation and starts widening out the domestic-international spread.”
The past week has seen the UK Government issue a policy statement designed to speed up the planning system for shale gas development, as well as announcing the extent of the 14th Round of Onshore Oil and Gas licences for England.
