International news for oil and gas professionals
Outside the oil patch, energy doesn't seem to be a factor in the US presidential election. When the issue is raised, it's usually the Joe Six-Pack complaint, "Gasoline prices are too damn high!"
An important center of oil-demand growth has turned wobbly, largely but not wholly because of structural flaws in its market for petroleum.
Oil producers' earnings during the second quarter benefited from strong prices and healthy production volumes, although oil price realizations were down from a year earlier.
Plains Exploration & Production Co. agreed to buy a number of deepwater Gulf of Mexico assets from BP PLC for $5.55 billion as part of BP's previously announced plan to divest the assets and focus its gulf operations on producing more high-margin barrels from fewer, larger assets.
Chesapeake Energy Corp. announced multiple agreements to sell most of its Permian properties, substantially all of its midstream assets, and certain noncore leasehold for total net proceeds of $6.9 billion.
Hurricane Isaac uncovered limited amounts of residual oil associated with the 2010 Macondo deepwater Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP PLC said Sept. 11, adding that the Macondo oil had been buried in isolated stretches of shoreline where BP had been cleaning before Isaac made landfall.
The South African government lifted a moratorium on shale gas exploration in Karoo basin although the Petroleum Agency of South Africa indicated that regulatory details continue to be finalized, so it's too soon to say when exploration permits might be granted.
An American Petroleum Institute official asked the US Environmental Protection Agency's Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) to quit excluding oil and gas industry experts from studies because of alleged possible conflicts of interest.
US voters will be able to choose between energy policies that embrace future technologies and responsibly develop more conventional resources, or a strategy that would reverse progress over the last 4 years, US President Barack Obama said as he formally accepted his party's nomination for a second term.
TransCanada Corp. filed a supplemental environmental report (SER) with Nebraska's Department of Environmental Quality that contains a preferred alternative route for the proposed Keystone XL crude oil pipeline across the state.
Winstar Resources Ltd., Calgary, said an external study indicates vast gas potential in the Silurian Tannezuft hot shale in the Ghadames basin in southern Tunisia as the company engaged a consultant to evaluate potential strategic alternatives to enhance shareholder value.
Approaches to green energy are diverging on opposing sides of the Atlantic as the incumbent US administration presses expensively forward and European governments come to their senses.
