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The 7-month-old plunge in oil prices will force Moscow to cut its budget for 2015 by 10 percent, perhaps even 15 percent, a senior Russian government official told a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland. Russia, the world’s largest producer of crude, traditionally has relied heavily on oil revenues to run its government, but Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said Jan. 21 that it is easing that reliance by tapping its currency reserves to make up for some of the revenue shortage. “A few years ago we decided to establish a macro framework [of financial reserves]…
Patrick Pouaynné, the CEO of oil giant Total, says continued low revenues mean the company has no choice but to cut capital spending, particularly investments in the North Sea and US shale operations. But jobs, he said, won’t be touched, and he predicted a return to more realistic prices eventually. “We have to control costs,” Pouyanné told France 2 television on Jan. 21 from Davos, Switzerland, where he has been attending the annual World Economic Forum. “This won’t mean cutting jobs. Over the medium and long term, we’ll stick to our strategy.” But in an interview with the Financial Times,…
As if there already weren’t enough oil on the world market, ExxonMobil Corp. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. are announcing that each has begun producing oil from two major projects. ExxonMobil said Jan. 19 that it had begun retrieving oil from the Arkutun-Dagi field of the Sakhalin-1 project in the northeast of Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East. Once it hits its stride, the company said, it is expected to produce 90,000 barrels a day. Arkutun-Dagi is the last of the three neighboring fields to be developed in the Sakhalin-1 project. The other two are Chayvo, which began production in…
The International Monetary Fund has revised downward its forecast for growth in Central Asia and the former Soviet Union to account for dramatically lower oil prices and the shriveling Russian economy. The region’s poorest countries can expect sharply higher inflation.The assessments are part of an economic update released January 21 in Washington.For energy importers like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the IMF says, any gains from lower oil prices are overshadowed by weakness in Russia, Central Asia’s largest trade partner and the destination for millions of Central Asian labor migrants. The IMF projects Russia’s economy to shrink 3 percent this year due…
The largest supplier of energy to British consumers has decided to reduce the retail price of gas by 5 percent, sharing with them a fraction of the money they save on the wholesale gas market. British Gas’ announcement on Jan. 19 follows last week’s decision by a competing gas provider, E.ON, which cut prices to its customers by 3.5 percent. Both these actions are expected to bring pressure on the four other major suppliers in the United Kingdom, EDF Energy, RWE npower, ScottishPower and SSE. “It is likely that some or all of the remaining Big Six suppliers will look…
The Texas Railroad Commission has released their oil and gas production data for November. As most of you know, the Texas RRC data is always incomplete. Some data is updated immediately but the rest trickles in slowly, sometimes taking many months or even years to complete. Nevertheless we can glean some indication of what is happening from what data is reported. That is, if production is increasing, then the incomplete month to month data should be increasing. And it is, but very slowly. The last data point in all charts below is November 2014 and the oil is in barrels…
I caught the Detroit Auto Show on Saturday afternoon. As always, it was great to see the concept cars of the future. But if you know me, you know I was there for news about electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrids. This is mostly just window shopping — most of the EV concept cars there are beyond a middle class budget. But then window shopping is fun, and there are some models that are becoming affordable. Electric vehicles are best paired with rooftop solar panels, both for price reasons and to reduce hydrocarbon use (the combination typically pays for itself…
As energy companies large and small abandon new capital spending projects, one initiative – albeit a relatively small one – remains on the table. Ashtabula Energy, a Houston-based division of Velocys Inc., plans to build a $200 million refinery that would convert natural gas to liquids in Ashtabula in northeastern Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie and has applied for a permit to do so by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. The plant, situated on an 80-acre site that once was part of the industrial city’s Union Carbide factory, would convert 2,800 barrels of gas into liquids each day.…
A local law professor says a federal judge was wise to “pick a number” between opposing estimates of the oil spilled by BP at the Deepwater Horizon site in the Gulf of Mexico nearly four years ago. In New Orleans, US District Judge Carl Barbier ruled Jan 15 that BP is responsible for losing 4.19 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, but reduced that to 3.19 million because of the amount of oil recovered after the accident. Federal prosecutors calculated the amount at 4.2 million barrels. As a result, BP’s maximum penalty can be no greater than $13.7 billion…
In this 2011 photo, Austin Mitchell walks away from an oil derrick outside of Williston, N.D. Credit: AP PHOTO/GREGORY BULL, FILE Five oil field workers died Thursday after their van crashed into a crude oil tanker truck, causing the truck to burst into flames. The crash occurred in Dimmit County around 7 a.m. Central Time, when the oil tanker truck rolled onto its side after swerving to avoid a pickup truck. The van carrying the men and one other vehicle then hit the truck. Three others were injured in the crash, and one remains in critical condition with burns covering…
