Workers at three of Total’s North Sea oil and gas platforms began a 12-hour strike at 1100 GMT on Monday, as planned, after talks with the company failed last week, a union official said. The affected platforms are Alwyn, Elgin and Dunbar. More discussions could be held this week although nothing had been fixed, Wullie Wallace, regional officer for the Unite union, told Reuters. The workers are striking over proposed changes to their working rotas and pay. Total confirmed the strike would go ahead and that it was “continuing to ...

Oil held steady even as Turkey’s economic strife sparked an emerging-market sell-off, fueling fears of broader market turmoil. West Texas Intermediate futures were little changed in New York after adding 1.2 percent Friday. The Turkish lira extended declines to a record low, sending tremors through global markets and spurring a shift to haven assets. The rout countered oil-supply concerns amid U.S.-Iranian tensions, which earlier buoyed crude. Turkey’s currency has been a casualty of a deepening crisis spurred by the administration’s growth-at-all-costs agenda and a worsening spat with the U.S., which ...

American drivers are unlikely to see prices at the pump fall if the Trump administration releases crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) because U.S. oil production already is sky high, analysts said. The potential release, ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November, would aim to bring relief to customers who have seen gasoline jump 50 cents a gallon in the past year. Even if the release temporarily sends futures contracts lower, there is no guarantee that pump prices would follow and remain down, according to analysts and market ...

On Aug 8, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced that starting Aug 23, import tariffs of $16 billion will be levied on a variety of American products, including liquefied natural gas (LNG), oil products and coal. The tit-for-tat levies came into action when, on Aug 8, the United States slapped a similar rate of tariffs on China starting Aug 23. As the second-biggest importer of LNG, China’s proposal to impose tariffs on LNG imports from the United States is definitely bad news for the LNG industry and President Trump’s “energy dominance ...

Five Caspian Sea states reached a breakthrough agreement on sovereign rights to the sea, paving the way for new oil and gas extraction — and pipelines — after more than two decades of disputes. The treaty ends a spat over whether the Caspian is a sea or a lake, granting it special legal status and clarifying the maritime boundaries of each surrounding country. It also allows each to lay pipelines offshore with consent only from the neighboring states affected, rather than from all Caspian Sea nations. “Many years of thorough ...

Last night President Trump spoke to business leaders at a dinner. Daniel Dale, the Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, posted several tweets about the dinner. In one, he wrote “Quick fact check: Trump spoke to business leaders for 14 minutes at dinner tonight. He made 15 false claims.” Several of the reported claims were related to energy, but one in particular caught my eye. The second “false” claim listed was “…unleashing American energy, where we’re now the largest in the world.” It isn’t clear whether the President was talking ...

The first U.S. sanctions have been reimposed on Iran with little sign of either side softening its position. Curbs on oil exports will follow in early November and the effect will be bigger and swifter than last time around. Oil forecasters don’t seem to have grasped that yet. There’s no doubt that President Donald Trump will be tougher on Iran than Barack Obama was, with no gradual ratcheting-up of pressure. Importers are expected to have tapered off oil purchases by Nov. 5, when the curbs come into effect. Any waivers ...

President Donald Trump’s plan Friday to double tariffs on steel imported from Turkey to 50% could place additional financial pressure on Kinder Morgan’s proposed 1.98 Bcf/d Gulf Coast Express Pipeline and dampen prospects for future US natural gas projects. The escalating trade headwinds for domestic pipeline operators come at a time when transportation constraints in the prolific Permian Basin shale play have increased demand for new takeaway capacity to deliver supplies to market for use in exports and to serve power-hungry Mexico. Houston-based Kinder Morgan, which moves more than a ...

European refiners are likely to be preparing to switch crude slates and start importing sweet barrels instead of sour, oil product traders told S&P Global Platts. Throughout the summer the market has been focused on running heavier barrels with a higher yield of fuel oil and heavy gasoil. Strong cracks for the two have allowed refiners to keep secondary units topped up and running and kept margins healthy. Crude barrels with a heavier residual cut have done well as a result, pushing sweet barrels into a lower but attractive pricing ...

Aim is to reduce oil import bill by ₹12,000 crore, says Prime Minister Modi India will triple its ethanol production over the next four years till 2022 and this will save ₹12,000 crore in the country’s oil import bill, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday, which is being celebrated as World Biofuels Day. The Prime Minister also blamed the previous government for not encouraging the production and adoption of ethanol, saying his government has planned 12 biofuel refineries in the country at an investment of ₹10,000 crore. “The ethanol ...

Diesel demand in the U.S. Gulf Coast (PADD 3) has shown remarkable year-on-year growth in 2017 and 2018, according to Genscape Supply Side data, linked to the resurgence in Permian Basin crude oil production. However, this year-on-year diesel demand growth slowed in May and June as rig counts flattened. For the remainder of 2018, additional crude oil production growth should continue to support PADD 3 diesel demand increases above 2017 levels per Genscape’s U.S. Crude Production Forecast. While diesel is primarily used in the U.S. for commercial trucking and some ...

This year, the US has turned into the world’s largest oil producer alongside top exporters Saudi Arabia and Russia, all due to its booming shale oil industry. This signals a significant transition and one with economic and political implications, given that the US had already joined the club of the world’s largest natural gas producers and exporters, again thanks to its thriving shale industry. The US oil and gas production is expected to continue to rise — in an interview with Bloomberg, the director of the US Energy Information Administration ...

Compliance with the Vienna Agreement, envisaging oil output cuts has eased to 97 percent in July as output cuts were relaxed, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its August Oil Market Report. Global oil supply rose by 300,000 barrels per day in July to 99.4 million barrels per day, 1.1 million barrels per day above a year-ago, according to the report. The IEA estimates that non-OPEC production is expected to grow by 2 million barrels per day in 2018 and by 1.85 million barrels per day next year. “OPEC ...

State-owned Indian Oil Corp. posted a 50 percent jump in quarterly profit as the margin for converting crude into fuels more than doubled. Net income climbed to 68.3 billion rupees ($992 million) in the quarter ended June 30, from 45.5 billion rupees a year earlier, the company said in a stock-exchange filing Saturday. That compares with the 53.3 billion-rupee average of 20 estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales rose 16 percent to 1.5 trillion rupees. India’s largest refiner has taken advantage of rising domestic oil consumption, which expanded for a 10th ...

The removal of U.S. crude from goods targeted by Chinese tariffs is a sign that America has become too big to ignore in the oil market. Less than two months after threatening to impose levies on imports of U.S. crude, the world’s biggest oil buyer has now spared the commodity. Only fuels such as diesel, gasoline, propane will be hit with duties on Aug. 23, according to China’s commerce ministry. That’s after the nation’s buyers, including top refiner Sinopec, began shunning American supplies to avoid the risk of tariffs. China’s ...