International news for oil and gas professionals
This week's issue of Oil & Gas Journal includes its OGJ150/OGJ100 special report. This massive annual report is a mainstay for many industry analysts, company executives, and financial market-movers who utilize the information to determine how companies fared over the past fiscal year.
The Obama administration's aggressive move on vehicle fuel mileage Aug. 28 receives important context from its legislative origins.
In the era of Twitter and Facebook, with information increasingly flashy and decreasingly illuminating, fine distinctions too often yield to the blur.
The front-month crude contract for North Sea Brent climbed through most of August from $104.92/bbl July 31 to as high as $116.90/bbl Aug. 16, hovering around $114/bbl through Aug. 24 as market optimism for solution of the Euro-zone financial crisis and increased demand "prevailed over hard facts and past experience," said analysts at the Centre for Global Energy Studies, London.
The OGJ150 group of US-based oil and gas producers reported much stronger financial and mostly improved operating results for 2011 compared with a year earlier.
The world's largest oil and gas producers reported improved financial results in 2011 from a year earlier, according to Oil & Gas Journal's annual survey of the 100 leading companies based outside the US. Stronger oil prices than those in 2010 bolstered the earnings of most of the companies featured in the report.
Oil pipeline operators' net income soared to an all-time high of $6.1 billion, a 33.3% increase from 2010 achieved on the back of a nearly 12% increase in operating revenues.
Producers report that better efficiencies are delivering higher volumes of oil from the South Texas Eagle Ford and the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana.
The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) released a recommended practice for surveying water supplies before drilling, marking the third in a series of MSC recommended practices aimed at reinforcing the coalition's guiding principles to "continuously improve our practices and seek transparency."
Industry had shut in most of the US Gulf of Mexico offshore crude production before Hurricane Isaac made landfall in Plaquemines Parish, La., Aug. 29 as a slow-moving Category 1 hurricane.
Democrats quickly attacked presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's energy plan as more oil and gas industry associations applauded it.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission voted to adopt a requirement for US oil and gas and other extractive industries to report payments to foreign governments.
Mitt Romney drew a clear line when he announced his campaign's energy policy on Aug. 23. The most important part of it led directly back to producing US states.
DNO International ASA, Oslo, said that the company's share of oil exports from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has averaged 40,000 b/d from startup 10 days ago and that the company will continue to deliver these volumes at least through the first week of September as requested by the Kurdistan Regional Government.
AWE Ltd., Sydney, said tight sandstone reservoirs flowed gas at a rate estimated at 500 Mcfd during initial clean-up after a hydraulic frac at the Senecio-2 well in the onshore Perth basin in Western Australia.
The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate has recognized Statoil ASA for improving oil recovery via gas injection at Oseberg field in the North Sea off Norway.
While most US states remain stuck in economic doldrums, signs of rebound are on the rise across the Midwest and Great Plains states.
The last decade saw total new global O&G resource additions exceed consumption while yet-to-find estimates were revised significantly upwards.
Niger has awarded nine production sharing contracts (PSCs) to five exploration companies that will seek to follow the lead of China National Petroleum Corp., which established the country's first hydrocarbon production in late 2011.
This is the second of three parts on the potential of domestic unconventional shale oil and gas production to displace oil imports to the US.
Are floating units, such as FPSOs, ships or permanent installations? Without an international standard, answers vary.
Microeconomic factors (downtime for turnarounds and trends in production costs from heavy feeds, for example) rather than macroeconomic trends during first-half 2012 were more important influences on short-term trends in US ethylene production and profitability, as was the case during second-half 2011.
Fluid catalytic cracking was the focus of extensive questions and discussion at the 2011 American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers's Q&A and Technology Forum, Oct. 9-12, San Antonio.
Efforts during 2010-11 at Saudi Aramco's Yanbu refinery to rectify high reformate Reid vapor pressure (rvp) have increased the refinery's revenue.
