Several recent gas deals will tie Russia and Germany closer together.Russia’s Gazprom announced an agreement on asset swaps with European partners including OMV, BASF, E.ON, and Royal Dutch Shell. The deals will kick start the Nord Stream gas pipeline expansion and also give Gazprom a greater presence in Europe, while giving several European companies assets inside Russia.For example, Austrian-based OMV will receive a 24.98 percent in two fields in Russia in exchange for the “participating interest in OMV.”“This Agreement is another step closer to the cooperation with Gazprom along the entire value chain. We purchase Russian gas for our European…
The Nile has been the source of life for the people of Egypt for all of recorded history. A blue stripe down the spine of Egypt’s desert terrain, one of the earliest civilizations known to man grew and prospered for centuries along its banks. But long before the first pharaoh, the Nile was laying the groundwork for a resource that would provide for her people today, one layer of organic material at a time. On Sunday, Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi S.p.A. (Eni), an Italian multinational oil and gas company, announced its discovery of a “super giant” natural gas field in the…
As natural gas drillers turn to “supersize” fracking, natural gas supplies could be abundant and cheap for a long-time to come. That is how the Wall Street Journal phrases what is going on in the natural gas industry, where gas exploration companies continue to innovate the same drilling techniques that sparked the original shale gas revolution. By now we have all heard about fracking and horizontal drilling. But companies continue to expand these techniques and fine tune them. Now, according to Wall Street Journal, a few companies in Louisiana have begun using “supersize” versions of horizontal drilling. Comstock Resources and…
While Russia’s shifting global tendencies have been dubbed a pivot eastward, economic and political realities have shown the pivot to be far from discriminatory. Russia cares little if Germany or China, or neither meets its demand needs – just, that they are met. Toward that end, Russia has also been eyeing North Africa, more specifically, Egypt. With its rapidly growing oil and natural gas consumption and stumbling domestic production, the country was supposed to be a promising, long-term market. It still is, but for different reasons and for different parties. On August 30, Italian major Eni announced the discovery of…
As the price of natural gas continues to hover around its lows for the year, it looks like the economic principles of supply and demand are starting to take effect in the market. The U.S. EIA recently found that production from seven major shale basins in the U.S. should start to drop quickly after reaching an all-time production high in May. The seven basins produced a total of 45.6 billion cubic feet per day of gas in May, but that figure should drop 1.5 percent by September. Of the seven basins, only Utica will post an increase in production. The…
Bearish moods seemed to have permanently settled in energy markets. The first and most obvious victim of the nosediving oil prices has been natural gas. Once seen invincible, liquefied natural gas (LNG) growth could now be racing to the edge of a cliff. Falling natural gas prices and fears about slowing demand in European and Asia all point to the return of a buyers’ market. Meanwhile, as crude prices fall, the oil-indexed European and Asian LNG contracts are plummeting in value, making upcoming LNG projects unsustainable. The pessimistic scenario seems to be reinforced by slumping demand in Asia, where the…
Italian oil company Eni announced on August 30 that it may have discovered one of the world’s largest natural gas fields off the coast of Egypt. The company said that the discovery may hold 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in place (5.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent) over an area of 100 square kilometers. Not only is that enough to rank it as the largest find ever made in the Mediterranean Sea, but that ranks as one of the top in the world. Eni says that, when fully developed, the Zohr field could provide enough gas to satisfy…
I've been discussing in Prime Meridians how natural resources investment is changing. With one of the biggest emerging trends being sovereign investment in mining and energy. And new data this week showed why this critical shift is going to continue. The numbers came from Japan--a nation that was one of the earliest to pursue strategic overseas investment in natural resource projects. A program that is now bearing fruit in a major way. As reported by Platts, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry released new data Monday showing that the country's overseas oil and gas projects are producing at record…
Russia has publicly touted an array of natural gas export projects over the past year, a web of pipelines that would connect Russian gas to some of its largest customers, while also achieving important strategic objectives. But many of these projects will not come to pass. Russia is one of the world’s largest producers of natural gas, and Europe has long been its most important customer. But that suddenly changed after the Ukraine crisis began in early 2014. Since then, Europe has made some small but important steps towards reducing its dependence on Russian gas, while weak demand, mild winters,…
This week U.S. President Barack Obama took aim at the American coal industry as part of a comprehensive climate change plan to limit air emissions from what many consider the country's worst polluter.Under the plan, states will have until 2030 to cut CO2 levels by a third from what they were in 2005. Outside the United States, Europe is using less coal, the Canadian province of Ontario shut down its coal-fired power generation (albeit in favor of more expensive renewables), and the World Bank last week rejected the notion that coal can cure poverty.Even coal-hungry China has banned coal-fired power…
