OPEC and its allies are likely to gradually revive oil output in the second half of the year to ease consumer anxiety as prices trade near $80 a barrel, said Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih. The Saudi comments, echoed by Russia, mark a major shift in the historic alliance they forged in 2016 to end a global oil glut. While the producers were determined just a month ago to keep supply restrained and boost prices, they’re now changing course as oil’s surge to a three-year high puts strain on the ...

It would be unprecedented, but Senate Democrats want the Trump administration to send Energy Secretary Rick Perry to Vienna next month for an OPEC meeting. • Senate Democrats think meeting will help price stability • Analysts see meeting as long shot • Perry appearance at Vienna seminar “plausible” Perry should go to the June 22 meeting in Vienna “to personally communicate the importance of maintaining stable crude oil prices,” four senators wrote in a letter to President Trump Wednesday. The letter, signed by Democratic senators Chuck Schumer of New York, ...

Asian spot liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices breached the $$9 per million British thermal unit (mmBtu) mark this week, a three-year summer season high driven by crude oil gains, production outages and demand from key Asian consumers. Spot prices for July LNG-AS delivery in Asia were at $9.20 per mmBtu this week, gaining 50 cents from the previous week and the highest in more than three months. Demand from buyers in South Korea, China and India supported prices at a time when maintenance in Angola is expected to curb supply. ...

Bureau Veritas, a global leader in testing, inspection and certification (TIC) services, today launched its latest decommissioning guide at Decom Offshore 2018. ‘Decommissioning on the UK Continental Shelf – an overview of regulations’ provides up-to-date, easy to understand, guidance of the regulations that apply to decommissioning work, from operators and stakeholders to the supply chain. This detailed guide describes the necessary procedures for operators and duty holders to plan, execute and follow-up decommissioning work and help them comply with the relevant legislation. Having a firm understanding of the rules and ...

Equinor has awarded Odfjell a contract for drilling two times three production wells for the Fram and Askeladd licences by using the Deepsea Atlantic rig. Odfjell has also been awarded a master framework agreement (MFA). Equinor has signed a framework agreement with Odfjell with terms that will be used for future rig contracts with Odfjell on the Norwegian continental shelf. At the same time, the first rig contract has been signed for Deepsea Atlantic under this contract format. “We have reached a long-term agreement with standard terms that will ensure ...

India’s top explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp has awarded its first mini-term tender to sell Brazil’s heavy crude oil Ostra in June-November to Shell, three sources familiar with the matter said. ONGC Videsh, the overseas investment arm of ONGC, owns a 27 percent stake in Brazil’s BC-10 block, and would sell its entire Ostra crude entitlement from the block over the period of the contract. In the tender, ONGC offered to sell 750,000 barrels for lifting in June, but it specified no quantities for the remaining months of the ...

Saudi Arabia is most likely to hold the initial public offering (IPO) of oil giant Aramco in 2019, Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Friday, confirming a delay from the initial plan to list the company this year.

India’s state-owned exploration company Oil and Natural Gas Corp will by early 2019 quadruple the output from an offshore gas block in the Bay of Bengal that it spent a billion dollars on last year, according to a senior ONGC official. Output from the Deendayal natural gas block off India’s east coast will reach as high as a million standard cubic metres per day by January 2019, according to Rajesh Kakkar, head of ONGC’s offshore division. ONGC bought the Deendayal field in 2017 from state-owned company Gujarat State Petroleum Corp ...

Pipeline bottlenecks have vexed North American oil producers this year, but for companies making a little-known additive called drag-reducing agent (DRA), they have provided a veritable windfall. DRA is injected into pipelines to reduce the contact between the oil and the wall of the pipe, allowing more crude to flow through. It is a tiny but booming business, accounting for about $500 million in global sales – half of that in the United States – but is growing about 8 percent annually, said Brian Watt, senior vice president at specialty ...

Russian state oil major Rosneft signed a deal to help Kurdistan develop its gas reserves and build a gas pipeline, expanding the company’s dominance in the energy sector of Iraq’s semi-autonomous region. Rosneft said it would conduct a pre-FEED (front engineering and design) of a gas pipeline in Kurdistan as part of its plan to build an integrated gas business value chain in the region. It said it would focus on partnerships and third-party project financing for gas projects in Kurdistan. Rosneft has agreed to invest billions of dollars in ...

British wholesale gas prices for immediate delivery fell on Friday as some flows from Norway resumed and warm weather was expected over a long weekend. * Within-day contract was down 1.5 pence at 57.80 pence/therm (p/therm) at 0800 GMT. * Weekend prices also slipped, down 0.75 pence to 56.75 p/therm. * The system was slightly undersupplied with demand forecast at 176 million cubic metres and supply seen at 171 mcm. * However, flows from Norway rose on Friday and are expected to climb further as a number of planned outages ...

Japan’s Kansai Electric Power Co will cut spot purchases of liquefied natural gas and is cautious on signing long-term LNG supply contracts as it slowly lifts the share of nuclear power in its generation mix, a senior official said. The Osaka-based utility was the most reliant on nuclear energy in Japan, using reactors for about half of the power it produced before the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. Of the eight reactors that have resumed generating power in Japan – a fifth of available units – after passing tougher safety ...

The OPEC-led coalition plans to conduct consultations with various countries on potential gradual increase in oil production ceilings within the next weeks, with the changes likely to be implemented in the second half of the year, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister Khalid Al-Falih said Friday. OPEC has begun consultations with Russia and plans to contact other countries in coming weeks to discuss potential change in the production cut quotas as the group is close to reaching its goal of market rebalancing, Falih said. His comments followed a meeting between Falih and ...

The CEO of Russia’s top oil producer Rosneft, Igor Sechin, Friday warned that oil prices could hit new records in the near future due to the sanctions that the US is implementing against some hydrocarbons producing countries. “The policy of sanctions and ultimatums in respect of hydrocarbons markets cannot help but establish a ‘sanctions premium’ to the price,” Sechin said. “I don’t rule out that quite soon we’ll be able to talk about a sanctions commodity supercycle and we’ll see new price records shortly,” he said, speaking to a key ...

Growing expectations of increased oil output slammed crude prices on Friday, lifting the U.S. dollar and weighing on energy shares, while political upheaval in Europe and uncertainty over a U.S.-North Korea summit restrained equity markets and boosted bond prices. Crude oil prices lost roughly $3 a barrel after Saudi Arabia and Russia said they were ready to ease supply curbs that have pushed prices to their highest since 2014. U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday signalled that a June 12 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un could still ...