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Articles and research looking into crude oil, whether it be exploration and refining - crude oil price movements or new crude oil extraction techniques. we have it covered here. Look at our energy section for more fossil fuel coverage.
Yesterday's Russian downgrade pulled yet another raft of "smartest people in the room" to tell investors how screwed Russia is by low oil prices (and yet the US Shale industry is fine and will manage through this). However, Goldman Sachs prefers facts in its analysis of the Russian oil sector and concludes, investor concerns about the health of Russia's oil industry should remain more myth than reality. Via Goldman Sachs, Geydar Mamedov discusses myths and realities in the outlook for Russia's oil sector There are increasing concerns among investors that lower oil prices might hit Russian crude production and materially…
U.S tight oil production from shale plays will fall more quickly than most assume. Why? High decline rates from shale reservoirs is given. The more interesting reasons are the compounding effects of pad drilling on rig count and poorer average well performance with time. Rig productivity has increased but average well productivity has decreased. Every rig used in pad drilling has approximately three times the impact on the daily production rate as a rig did before pad drilling. At the same time, average well productivity has decreased by about one-third. This means that production rates will fall at a much…
The United States is seeking to dislodge Venezuela’s energy influence in the Caribbean, capitalizing on the collapse in oil prices. Vice President Joe Biden hosted the first ever Caribbean Energy Security Summit in Washington DC on January 26. The summit, attended by leaders of Caribbean nations, was intended to find cleaner and more affordable sources of energy. As island nations with few indigenous sources of energy (save natural gas in Trinidad and Tobago), many rely on costly oil and gas imports. But beyond providing sustainable alternatives, the energy summit appears to be an attempt to peel off Caribbean nations from…
What the current oil price slump means for world oil supply is starting to emerge. "Layoffs," "cutbacks," "delays," and "cancellations" are words one sees in headlines concerning the oil industry every day. That can only mean one thing in the long run: less supply later on than would otherwise have been the case. But perhaps the most important thing you need to understand about the coming oil production cutbacks is where they are going to come from, namely Canada and the United States. Why is this important? For one very simple reason. Without growth in production from these two countries,…
One of the greatest foreign policy blunders of the Obama Administration was the push by the U.S. for economic sanctions against Russia. That led to Russia fleeing into the arms of China for refuge. In response, Russia, Europe’s largest and most populated country, is now intent on moving its vast storehouse of resources eastward, strengthening America’s largest emerging rival. Over the last two years, the two countries have completed a $700 billion agreement for Russia to deliver energy to China, amounting to about 17% of Chinese annual supply, for a period covering twenty years, with China financing much of the…
The latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out with OPEC production data for. The data is “Crude Only” and does not reflect condensate production. Also the charts, except for Libya, are not zero based. I chose to amplify the change rather than the total. All Data is in thousand barrels per day with the last data point December 2014. OPEC 12 production has averaged slightly above or below 30 million barrels per day for about two years now and there is little chance it will go anywhere very fast. But what is obvious from the above chart is there…
The U.S. oil and gas rig count continues to fall – having plummeted by 74 rigs for the week ending on January 16 – in a clear sign that the contraction will likely persist for some time. A fresh wave of layoffs and spending cuts were announced this past week. Baker Hughes (NYSE: BHI) said that it would slash 7,000 from its payrolls, for example. Oil Prices Go Down…And Back Up As rigs and roughnecks disappear from the oil patch, production will decline. However, it will not decline right away – there tends to be several month lag period between…
Schlumberger Ltd.’s move to buy nearly half of Eurasia Drilling Co. (EDC), Russia’s largest oil drilling concern, will cost it about $1.7 billion and perhaps a few sleepless nights over the prospect that Western sanctions may eventually apply to the new acquisition. But the American oil services giant also just may have found a genuine bargain.Houston-based Schlumberger’s decision to buy 45.65 percent of EDC comes at a time when the European Union and the United States have imposed stiff economic sanctions on Russia for its support of separatist fighters in neighboring Ukraine.Under the sanctions, Western energy companies may not help…
A highly controversial oil project that Spain’s national government had pinned its hopes on was just cancelled. Spanish oil giant Repsol has decided to call off drilling near the Canary Islands, a small chain of Spanish-controlled islands off the coast of Morocco. While oil companies across the globe are slashing capital expenditures and scrapping rigs because of low oil prices, Repsol’s divisive campaign to drill off the coast of Canary Islands suffered from a different problem. Despite what was being billed as potentially the largest oil discovery in Spanish history, Repsol reported highly disappointing results from its surveying. Repsol spent…
Petrobras looked like a model for transparency in the energy sector and, with a recent discovery of large offshore deposits, was poised to make Brazil a regional energy superpower. However, a corruption scandal clouds the company, leaving the future of Brazil’s pre-salts in doubt. Brazil’s pre-salt deposits are the largest deep-water oil reservoirs globally with unparalleled revenue potential for operators with the adequate technological capacity. But foreign operators interested in developing pre-salt blocks are subject to a special set of rules in accordance with the Brazilian government’s “Three Systems Model”. Besides mandatory local content, any block must be jointly developed…
