Budget needs are forcing Saudi Arabia to push for oil prices of at least $70 per barrel this year, industry sources say, even though U.S. shale oil producers could benefit and Riyadh’s share of global crude markets might be further eroded. Riyadh, OPEC’s de facto leader, said it was steeply cutting exports to its main customers in March and April despite refiners asking for more of its oil. The move defies U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands for OPEC to help reduce prices while he toughens sanctions on oil producers Iran ...

The OPEC + Agreement has made it possible to balance the world oil market and set a price for a resource that suits both the producer and the buyer, said Lukoil’s first executive vice president, Ravil Maganov. “I think that OPEC + is good. It has allowed to balance the market. Today’s price of $60-70 per barrel suits both the manufacturer and the buyer. And it rids the speculators from unnecessary trouble, because they win on the rise, hedging in advance, and win on the fall of prices,” he said. ...

Oil & Gas UK published its annual Business Outlook review and presented its findings in both London and Aberdeen on 20 March. Westwood’s Technical Manager, Alyson Harding, comments. One of the key messages was that £200 billion needs to be spent to achieve “Vision 2035” of at least 1 million boepd production in 2035 and a cumulative of 8.4 billion boe produced between 2019 – 2035. Of this, £20 – £30 billion would need to be spent on unlocking the 2.5 billion boe contingent resources where development options are being ...

Say “energy independence” to most people, and they will agree that it is a worthy and laudable policy goal. The right wants to wean us off of foreign oil. The left wants to wean us off of oil, period. Both seem to think it’s a bad thing that we buy oil or other fuels from foreign countries. I’m not convinced. Energy is important to any economy, but I don’t think “energy independence” is any more important or worthy a goal than “food independence” or t-shirt independence. It indulges the “imports ...

A three-day petrochemical fire that spread a cancer-causing chemical and thick smoke over Houston suburbs this week has spurred calls for tougher safety regulations that could affect a nearly dozen crude-export terminals proposed for the U.S. Gulf Coast. Federal, state and local officials have begun investigating whether Mitsui & Co’s Intercontinental Terminals Co (ITC) met safety and environmental regulations after the fire in Deer Park, Texas, spread quickly among rows of giant tanks that hold up to 3.3 million gallons of fuel each. The blaze released toxic benzene which led ...

Crude oil prices are on the rise. Last week WTI topped $60 a barrel for the first time since Nov 9, 2018 and Brent hit a four-month high at $68.69 on Thursday. The determination of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and its allies, Russia included, to continue with their experiment of cutting output to get rid of the glut in the market seems working. Fresh evidence of the success of Opec’s strategy arrived last Wednesday when the US Energy Information Administration posted a large and unexpected drop in ...

Trying to fix the crude market has been hard enough for OPEC. Alberta’s go at it is proving a bigger challenge than the oil-rich Canadian province anticipated. Since mandatory production cuts were announced in December, local heavy crude has gone from too cheap to too expensive. While pipelines remain as full as ever, the extra cost of shipping the oil by train to the U.S. means it’s not competitive with American and Mexican crudes. On Monday, Alberta dialed back the cuts for the third time since they were implemented in ...

Chevron and ExxonMobil plan to significantly ramp up production in the US shale heartland as the oil behemoths are seeking to go from shale to scale in the Permian. An in-depth report by Rystad Energy’s shale team examines which operator holds the best potential in the prolific basin spanning parts of Texas and New Mexico. Here are five takeaways: Drilling activity ExxonMobil will have to drill about twice as many new wells as Chevron to reach the communicated production goal. The explanation relates in part to the difference in base ...

Three days – that’s what it took to lift four of the last pieces in the Johan Sverdrup puzzle into place – the two final platform topsides, a bridge and a flare stack. The processing platform lift was the heaviest lift ever performed offshore. “Now we are in the process of concluding the installation campaign for the first phase of construction of Johan Sverdrup. Putting the final building blocks of this gigantic project into place is important to ensure start-up of the field as planned in November this year,” says ...

South Sudan said it aims to increase oil output from the current 145,000 barrels a day (bpd) to about 200,000 by 2020. Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, minister of petroleum, said in a statement issued in Juba on Thursday that increase in oil production will enable them to put more crude on the market as they seek more buyers. “Operating companies nationwide are engaged in preparing for oil production resumption, likely increasing production by the end of 2019 to 200,000 bpd,” said Gatkouth. He also disclosed that due to ongoing peace implementation, ...

The Senate Standing Committee on Aviation was told that soon an oil depot or terminal would be set up at Gwadar to facilitate the passengers. A meeting of the committee was held here at the Parliament House with Senator Mushahidullah Khan in the chair. Senator Manzoor Ahmed Kakar said Gwadar was going to become the country’s economic hub but there were no buses available to carry passengers to Gwadar airport. He said airplanes also had to go somewhere else to get the fuel, adding it was surprising that even ordinary ...

The Chennai port has surpassed its own record in container handling. The East Coast’s gateway port handled 15.70 lakh TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) as on March 21 — 10 days ahead of the fiscal closure . The previous record of 15.65 lakh TEUs was achieved in 2015-16. The Chennai port has two private container terminals — Chennai International Terminals Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of PSA International, Singapore, and Chennai Container Terminal Pvt Ltd of DP World, Dubai. The port handles around 1.5 million TEUs a year. serving It serves Chennai, ...

Russia’s government and oil companies have agreed to extend by three months a deal to regulate the price of oil products before Moscow sets up a new export-regulating mechanism, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak said. In an attempt to stem an unwanted increase in the cost of petrol and diesel, a politically sensitive issue for voters, the government and oil companies agreed last year to cut wholesale domestic fuel prices. The price regulation measure was designed to be temporary and be in place until March 31. On Thursday, after a ...

There may be an imminent disruption of activities at the Lagos ports as angry freight forwarders operating in the Western Zone of the ports have issued a 72- hour ultimatum to the federal government to call the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Col Hameed Ali (rtd), to order and address the multiplication of Customs task forces at the ports. The customs agents threatened that if the situation is not reversed by Monday, the freight forwarders in the western zone will withdraw their services. At a joint press ...

Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA said on Friday it was spending $320 million on put options hedging part of its Brent output at $60 per barrel, in a move to lock in some of this year’s price gains. “The strategy is to hedge the export operations expected for the year, that way partially protecting the company’s operational cash flow,” the company said in a securities filing. The options expire by the end of the year. Brent crude futures hovered around $67 per barrel in international markets on Friday. ...