0
0
0
0
0
0
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.
A lobbying blitz is underway to scrap the decades old ban on crude oil exports from the United States. Originally implemented during price spikes in the 1970’s, oil exports from the U.S. have been legally blocked, save for exemptions given to exports to Canada. That was largely a nonissue for several decades as the U.S. was a massive importer of oil, and there wasn’t much of an opportunity for domestic drillers to export crude. That all changed in the last few years with a flood of new production. Calls for lifting the ban on exports began in earnest in 2014.…
I will preface this article with my standard disclaimer on the Keystone XL Pipeline project: I have no vested interest in the pipeline either way. My interest is in fostering honest debate and discussion on energy policy, and because there has been so much distortion and outright lies related to the pipeline project, I have addressed the topic from time to time. To reiterate, I don’t think it ultimately makes much difference one way or the other whether the pipeline is built. Not to the environment and not to energy security. I think the likelihood that this oil will simply…
Have you ever noticed that during extreme economic cycles, when trends are roaring on the upside, or conversely crashing back down to earth, there often appears an air of extremism in news headlines? Take America’s most recent shale oil boom, and bust, for example. On the way up, you may have seen – Why OPEC Could Be Dead in 10 Years. Conversely, now you may have read, Why It Might Be ‘Game Over For The Fracking Boom’. In the end, the answer lies somewhere in-between. OPEC, although often plagued with internal discord, will still remain the global defacto 900-pound gorilla…
Credit: Shutterstock Transporting oil via pipeline is a risky business, especially if you’re doing it underwater. But one company is putting technology to use that it says could end up making the process a lot safer.Norway-based research company SINTEF is working to complete tests on its SmartPipe pipeline, which uses sensors and a wireless system to transmit data on the pipeline’s health to those monitoring the pipeline. Ole Øystein Knudsen, Project Manager for the SmartPipe research, has been working to finalize the technology for the pipeline since 2003. He told ThinkProgress in an email that the sensors embedded into the…
The Mexican government has unveiled much-anticipated offers for offshore acreage in the Gulf of Mexico for oil exploration. In this second phase of “Round One” auctions, Mexico is offering up nine production sharing contracts across five areas, holding an estimated 355 million barrels of oil combined. The Mexican government has anticipated very strong interest for this round as the fields are located in shallow water where state-owned oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) has already been actively drilling. Even better, the fields that the government is putting up for bid include areas that already have oil reserves that have officially been…
Value per barrel is a completely hopeless way of putting a price on an oil company or project; but (as with democracy and political systems) unless you have all the detailed facts, numbers and sophisticated tax models it is still the best tool most investors have. The problems with the metric are legion. For a start, you have to be very clear about where and what the barrels are. Are they sales barrels, in a tanker on the way to Rotterdam; are they producing reserves – still in the ground, but all the development capital invested; are they PUDs (Proven…
No matter how much oil the United States produces over the next few years, it will never become the next Saudi Arabia in the global oil market, according to Fatih Birol, the incoming executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA). What's especially interesting about this forecast is that it directly contradicts what Birol said only three months ago, and he gave no explanation for his change of mind. On Feb. 26, Birol told The Telegraph’s Middle East Congress in London that OPEC, particularly the Persian Gulf members, will prevail over all other producers for the foreseeable future, even though…
Thursday morning saw a tremendous spike in share prices of the two biggest deepwater drilling rig owners, Transocean (RIG) and Seadrill (SDRL). After so many months of bad news and dropping share prices, is it finally time to get back on board to these specialists? Well, let's say it's time to finally put them back on your long-term radar. Transocean particularly shocked the street on their ability to beat every estimate out there on Thursday, with earnings of $865m, which translated to $0.95 a share, 17 cents above consensus. Seadrill also beat on revenue by a meager $10m, but based…
Oil. The commodity. We know what it’s worth – at least we thought we did – but what does a barrel of the black stuff get you in real life? Before we get theoretical, let’s first consider how much oil you use. If you’re in the United States, that figure is approximately 2.5 gallons of crude oil per day; roughly one barrel every seventeen days; or nearly 22 barrels per year. That’s just your share of US total consumption of course; the true number is harder to discern – minus industrial and non-residential uses, daily consumption drops to about 1.5…
I have been supplied an Excel spreadsheet of all North Dakota wells back to 2006, thanks to Enno Peters and Dennis Coyne. I only used the data back to 2007 however. This is a wealth of information if we want to know how many wells came on line in a given month, we simply count them. We are given the monthly production data for each month. And since we have the monthly production data we can very easily figure the decline rate of each well, or any group of wells for any month or year. A note on the data.…
