Meaningful increases in the number of wells drilled can be expected in the US and Canada in 2011 compared with 2010 as the shift toward oil drilling intensifies.
The Eagle Ford shale in South Texas is poised for rapid production growth because gathering, transportation, processing, and fractionation services already are in place or are planned, analysts and oil company executives note.
Unconventional oil production from the Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Niobrara plays is expected to approach 900,000 b/d in 2015 and exceed 1.3 million b/d by 2020, a consultant forecast.
Abdullah El-Badri, secretary general of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, urged the International Energy Agency to reverse its earlier decision to release 60 million bbl of oil over 30 days.
Global refinery runs recovered in 2010, but early 2011 margins well below the past decade's sometimes heady levels suggest excess capacity will exist and margins will stay low for another 5 years, an International Energy Agency official indicated on June 22.
It would be challenging to find another recent energy move by the administration of US President Barack Obama that was more quickly criticized by so many different people than the June 23 announcement that it would release 30 million bbl of oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Global ethylene producers last year added more than 8.6 million tonnes/year (tpy) of capacity, according to the latest Oil & Gas Journal's survey of the industry. That level sets a record for 1-year additions.
The International Energy Agency's decision to release 60 million bbl of crude and petroleum products from the strategic petroleum reserves is "the equivalent of QE2 in the oil market," said Barclays Capital analysts
A lingering threat of discriminatory taxation became a full populist assault against the US oil and gas industry last week. Pressure is intense in Washington, DC, to act on federal spending and revenue.
The June 20 US Supreme Court ruling in a case involving greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by electric power companies was good for the oil and gas industry but far from everything needed.
Kuwait Oil Co. launched simultaneously three major pilot projects with a fourth project in the planning phase, to demonstrate the benefits of the integrated digital oil field.
A well management company together with several operating companies and an integrated service provider optimized a 3-year exploration drilling campaign off Norway.
Safety and process operations received considerable attention during the 2010 National Petrochemical and Refiners Association Q&A and Technology Forum (Oct. 10-13; Baltimore).
This two-part series analyzes the economics of producing 50,000 b/d of methanol for gasoline blending from petroleum coke (petcoke) and examines some aspects of using methanol-gasoline blends for motor fuel.
The costs of two chemicals used in crude-oil refining went unchanged during 2008-10 and are no longer tracked, while the costs of three others varied significantly.
Applying a Total Pipeline Integrity Management System (TPIMS) to a large system with numerous segments and participants yields efficiencies in both pipeline operations and maintenance.
