The shift to drilling horizontal laterals, especially in shale oil and gas plays in the US, has led companies often to use coiled tubing units for well completion and intervention work, concludes a recent Simmons & Co. International research report.
On both sides of the Atlantic, economic distress has forced attention to a question too long ignored: How much unaffordable energy can nations afford to support?
Credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, embodiment of the ballyhooed consensus about humanly induced global warming, has suffered another blow.
Energy prices fell sharply June 15 with the August North Sea Brent contract dropping more than $6/bbl, wiping out "all gains of the last 15 trading days" and closing its price spread vs. West Texas Intermediate to "the weakest level" since March, said Olivier Jakob at Petromatrix, Zug, Switzerland.
Federal government decisions and broad policy mandates in the last 2 years to delay, shut down, or discourage Alaskan resource development are a broad-based policy failure, an Alaska state official told a US House Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee on June 2.
The US Bureau of Land Management will accelerate a lease sale within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska so that it will take place before the end of 2011, with subsequent lease sales annually, US Sec. of the Interior Ken Salazar said.
Republicans and most of the witnesses came to a US House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on June 16 expecting to discuss reauthorization of federal pipeline safety regulations.
A US House Energy and Commerce subcommittee passed a bill aimed at expediting a final Department of State decision on a cross-border permit for a proposed crude oil pipeline from Canada.
The US Federal Trade Commission will investigate whether crude oil and product price increases this spring resulted from possibly anticompetitive behavior, according to letters sent by FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz to five US senators.
The juxtaposition of triple-digit oil prices and 4-5% global economic growth looks paradoxical, but it partly reflects the time lags that affect oil market dynamics, the International Energy Agency said in its latest medium-term oil and gas markets report.
The National Petrochemical & Refiners Association lauded the US Supreme Court's decision on June 20 to reject attempts to address greenhouse gas emissions through the use of common law "nuisance" lawsuits.
Transocean Ltd., owner of the Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible drilling rig that exploded and sank following the Macondo well blowout on Apr. 20, 2010, said BP PLC used a poor well design and failed to properly confirm critical cement tests.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which earlier this month failed to agree new output targets, stands to earn a record $1.034 trillion from exports this year and even more in 2012, according to the US government.
The oil and gas industry will be pleased to hear that Russia must reduce its reliance on high oil prices and must press on with modernization of its economy in the next few years.
