When the giant P-67 floating oil production vessel lit its flare tower earlier this month, it marked the start of a Brazilian supply boom that’s poised to challenge OPEC’s efforts to balance the global market. The mammoth facility — long and wide enough to fit an American football field — is the first of four similar platforms to begin pumping crude this year, lifting Brazilian output by roughly 365,000 bpd, its largest annual increase in at least 20 years, International Energy Agency estimates show. A second platform, P-76, has also ...

Saudi Arabia has resumed its traditional role as the swing producer, sharply reducing its own output to tighten the oil market and push prices higher. The de facto OPEC leader has demonstrated, once again, that it can always tighten the physical market, boost prices and push the calendar spread into backwardation – if it is prepared to cut its own production enough. The familiar problem is that protecting prices comes at the expense of market share: the more the kingdom cuts its own production and tightens the market, the more ...

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia has received pledges of commitment from OPEC members and the group’s oil producer allies to cut production levels in line with their current output agreement, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister Khalid al-Falih said Wednesday. Compliance by some key producers to the cut commitment, agreed to run between January and June, have been “unquestionable,” he said. “I have been speaking to many ministers and those who have been slow in achieving their targets in January have all committed to getting quickly into position to meet their commitment through ...

Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazroui said the oil market is on the “right track” and that the market will quickly return to balance in the first quarter of this year. “January’s commitment levels to [an] oil cut were positive and we’re on the right track to achieve [an] oil market balance. We expect balance in the first quarter of this year,” Al Mazroui said on the sidelines of a Federal National Council session yesterday. The minister reiterated that the UAE was still 100 per cent committed to an oil production ...

The Union government decided to offer the private sector bigger oil and gas areas that belong to its companies Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Oil India on relaxed conditions. “To enhance production from existing nomination fields of ONGC and OIL, enhanced production profile will be prepared by both PSUs. For production enhancement, bringing new technology, and capital, national oil companies will be allowed to induct private sector partners,” said a government press release. Some 56 smaller contract areas of ONGC and OIL have been bid out to companies under ...

Heavy Canadian crude prices widened to the biggest discount against New York futures this year as pipeline-operator Enbridge Inc. reported that rationing on its heavy oil lines would increase next month. Western Canadian Select, an oil sands benchmark, traded at $15 a barrel below West Texas Intermediate futures Tuesday, $1.50 wider than on Friday and the biggest discount this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The discount widened as Enbridge said that crude shipments through the heavy oil pipelines of its Mainline, which is the largest Canadian oil export ...

An unexplored 7,000 square kilometer (2,700 square mile) swathe of the British North Sea, previously thought to contain empty chambers left by three extinct volcanoes, may hide oil and gas instead, the University of Aberdeen said. For decades it was assumed that the Rattray volcanic province off northwest Scotland contained old magma chambers, ruling out the possibility of oil and gas discoveries. However, the university’s geologists now say these “phantom volcanoes” never existed at all. The study’s findings raise the prospect of future discoveries in the area, which has been ...

Saudi Aramco’s Chief Executive Officer Amin Nassar said on Wednesday that the company is in talks with India’s Reliance Industries Ltd for possible investments and is seeking other opportunities in the country. Saudi Aramco signed an agreement in April with a consortium of state-owned Indian refiners to participate in a $44 billion refinery project on the country’s west coast. “We are looking at additional investment in India so we are in discussions with other companies as well, including Reliance and others,” Nasser said in a panel discussion in New Delhi. ...

The FOB Singapore 500 ppm sulfur gasoil cash differential jumped to a more than two-month high on the back of less supply from India and firm regional demand, Asian gasoil traders said this week. “For the 500 ppm grade, there are not much cargoes available … supplies from India have not been very much,” one of the traders said. At the close of Asian trade Tuesday, the FOB Singapore 500 ppm sulfur gasoil cash differential rallied 15 cents/b to close at minus $1.14/b to Mean of Platts Singapore Gasoil assessments. ...

Crude prices rose more than 1 percent on Wednesday to their highest level this year on hopes that oil markets will balance later this year, helped by output cuts from top producers as well as U.S. sanctions on OPEC members Iran and Venezuela. Market fears over trade talks between the United States and China had helped push oil prices lower in early trade, but the market reversed after signs of progress emerged on Wednesday and strengthened equity markets. [.N] U.S. President Donald Trump said negotiations with China were going well ...

Japan’s crude oil stocks stood at 77.52 million barrels as of February 16, up 4.4% from the week before, the Petroleum Association of Japan said Wednesday. The crude stocks, however, edged down 0.6% from a year earlier, S&P Global Platts data showed. PAJ data excludes floating storage and import barrels yet to arrive. Unfinished oil stocks, or oil processed at refineries, totaled 45.97 million barrels, up 0.5% from 45.74 million barrels the week before, PAJ said. But the stocks were up 8% from 42.56 million barrels a year earlier, Platts ...

Oil fell on Wednesday after the U.S. government said shale output would rise to a record next month, denting a rally that sent prices to their highest this year. Brent futures eased by 53 cents to trade at $65.92 a barrel by 1312 GMT, still within sight of Monday’s high for the year of $66.83. U.S. futures were at $55.77 a barrel, down 31 cents, having touched a 2019 peak of $56.39 earlier. “Brent is trading in a narrow corridor at around $66.5 per barrel, while WTI is at around ...

The stage has been set for a European natural gas price war that will help boost demand and enable both Russia and the US to increase sales to the region. The battle won’t brutalise earnings too much because gas supply is just so profitable in Europe, where prices are more than double the prevailing level in the US. And those costs probably won’t drop too far because higher carbon allowances and other climate measures are finally making the fuel’s traditional competitor, coal, less attractive. After successfully diluting planned European Union ...

U.S. oil output from seven major shale formations is expected to rise 84,000 barrels per day (bpd) in March to a record of about 8.4 million bpd, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a monthly report. The largest change is forecast in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, where output is expected to climb by 43,000 bpd to a record 4.024 million bpd in March. A shale revolution has helped boost the United States to the position of world’s biggest crude oil producer, ahead of Saudi Arabia ...

It’s a slow motion car crash. Venezuela’s inexorable slide from top of the heap to a virtual bit player in the oil market. Production sank progressively from 2.6 million b/d a decade ago, when it was third in OPEC behind only Saudi Arabia and Iran, to 2.0 million b/d by Q3 2017. Decline since has been precipitous – today it’s just 1.1 million b/d. The market has shrugged off the loss, even with the absence of sanctioned Iranian oil. Venezuela’s heavy barrels have been largely displaced by supplies from Canada, ...