The November contract for benchmark US light, sweet crudes fell $2.35 to $58.68/bbl Oct. 3, the lowest front-month closing on the New York Mercantile Exchange since Feb. 16.
The global oil market is suffering now from a lack of investments in the 1990s when oil prices were low and refining margins poor, said analysts at Fesharaki Associates Consulting & Technical Services Inc. (FACTS), Honolulu.
In a surprise move, Russia’s OAO Gazprom announced on Oct. 9 that it will develop giant Shtokman (Shtokmanovskoye) natural gas-condensate field in the Barents Sea without foreign partners and will pipe the gas to Europe rather than convert it to LNG for North American markets as had been planned.
The oil and gas industry faces a huge paradox as executives from its biggest companies gather in Washington, DC, for the American Petroleum Institute’s 2006 annual meeting Oct. 15-16.
In a bid to move Japan toward energy self-sufficiency, the country’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry is promoting technologies to provide new fuel sources, among them methane hydrate.
The US Department of Energy could have saved about $590 million from late 2001 through 2005 if it had used a steady dollar value of crude oil over time to assure that more purchases were made for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when prices were low, the Government Accountability Office says.
Water produced with oil and gas can help relieve pressure on surface-water resources, witnesses told a US House Resources subcommittee hearing Sept. 26.
Without accounting for likely attrition of older units, the world’s supply of jack ups will expand more than 16% by 2009, adding 61 jack ups now under construction, in addition to 3 delivered earlier this year.
Proper procedures in the design of clear brine completion fluids combined with proper handling of the fluids can mitigate annular environmentally assisted cracking (AEAC) in wells completed with corrosion-resistant alloys (CRAs), according to TETRA Technologies Inc.
Nova Chemicals Corp. used a holistic, best-practices approach to help sustain and improve the performance of control system assets at its Joffre, Alta., ethylene plant.
Suspension-based drag-reducing agents (DRAs) have proven to be an alternative to gel-based technology for ConocoPhillips Pipeline Co.'s US crude pipelines.
