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Five states and the Gulf of Mexico supplied more than 80%, or 6 million barrels per day, of the crude oil (including lease condensate) produced in the United States in 2013. Texas alone provided almost 35%, according to preliminary 2013 data released in EIA's March Petroleum Supply Monthly. The second-largest state producer was North Dakota with 12% of U.S. crude oil production, followed by California and Alaska at close to 7% each and Oklahoma at 4%. The federal offshore Gulf of Mexico produced 17%. Total U.S. crude oil production grew 15% in 2013 to 7.4 million barrels per day. Texas...

At a noisy, bustling shipyard 20 miles south of Istanbul, the world’s second-ever tugboat powered by liquefied natural gas sits at the end of a pier, awaiting its first water trial. “Then it’s off to Norway,” said with no little pride Ruchan Civgin, the contracts manager at Sanmar Shipyard, of the 115-foot vessel. “The first boat left in January.” Further south along the Marmara Sea coast, another shipbuilder is rolling out LNG-powered fish-feed vessels, used to transport feed for fish farms, for international markets. These ships may be the vanguard of a global boom in LNG-powered shipping, produced by the...

The long-term outlook for global oil prices is lower, perhaps much lower, giving a strong boost to the U.S. economy while potentially crippling the economy of Vladimir Putin's Russia. Vast new discoveries of oil and natural gas in the U.S. and around the globe could drive the oil price to as low as $75 a barrel over the next five years from a current $100. The demand side, too, will put pressure on the supremacy of petroleum. For the first time in its 150-year history, the internal combustion engine can be run efficiently on alternative fuels from a number of...

An energy company is dusting off an old, unused state law that can force property owners to accept oil and gas drilling under their land, pitting neighbor against neighbor in a Pennsylvania community and raising the possibility that lawmakers will have to take sides. Houston-based Hilcorp seeks to use a 1961 Pennsylvania law to drill under the property of four holdout landowners in New Bedford, near the Ohio border an hour north of Pittsburgh. The concept, known as “forced pooling,” means that people who don’t sign leases get bundled in with those who do, to make drilling more efficient and...

In September 2013, China's net imports of petroleum and other liquids exceeded those of the United States on a monthly basis, making it the largest net importer of crude oil and other liquids in the world. The rise in China's net imports of petroleum and other liquids is driven by steady economic growth, with rapidly rising Chinese petroleum demand outpacing production growth. U.S. total annual petroleum and other liquids production is expected to rise 31% between 2011 and 2014 to 13.3 million barrels per day, primarily from tight oil plays. In the meantime, Chinese production will increase at a much...

New West Texas transmission lines helped Lone Star wind power reach new gusty heights, hitting a record of more than 10,000 megawatts of generation late Wednesday night. The new West Texas transmission lines – with the unwieldy name of Competitive Renewable Energy Zone lines – cost the state almost $7 billion by the time they were completed last December, but are expected to earn their keep, giving the state the ability to nearly double its use of wind energy. “These Texas wind records were made possible by the completion of the Competitive Renewable Energy Zone transmission lines earlier this year,”...

Resolving legal issues that arise from Saturday’s fuel spill in Galveston Bay likely will require years of litigation and cost tens of millions of dollars. “You usually don’t talk about environmental cleanups in the millions of dollars range. It’s in the tens of millions of dollars range,” said Noah Hall, who focuses on environmental and water law as an associate professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. “You dump something in the water, and boy is it hard to get back.” Houston-based Kirby Corp., which owned and operated the barge that spilled 168,000 gallons of fuel after a collision Saturday,...

The Obama administration’s War on Carbon rages, but the good news is the incandescent light bulb still lives. For the third year in a row, the federal ban on the popular incandescent light bulb — the choice of most Americans — was postponed by Republican House intervention that defunded EPA enforcement of the law. “None of the funds made available in this Act may be used . . . to implement or enforce the standards with respect to incandescent reflector lamps,” reads section 322 of the $1.1 trillion budget signed by the president in January. The language was cheered by...

Exxon Mobil Corp. said Wednesday its major refinery in Baytown now can increase output of refined fuels again after closure of the Houston Ship Channel blocked waterborne oil supplies for three days. “We can confirm that we are receiving crude shipments and will be adjusting rates accordingly,” Todd Spitler, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil, said in an emailed statement. Spitler said the Irving oil and gas company does not disclose specifics about its production levels. Exxon Mobil’s refining complex in Baytown is the second-largest of its kind in the U.S. with a daily capacity of 586,000 barrels. “We expect to...

Boosted by the galloping pace of tight oil operations, the United States produced a tenth of the world’s oil at the end of last year, the Energy Information Administration reports. Overall U.S. oil production averaged 7.84 million barrels a day in the fourth quarter of 2013, 10 percent of the world production, up from 9 percent at the end of 2012. Shale and other dense rock, newly accessible because of advancements in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, accounted for 3.22 million barrels of the U.S. daily average during the three months ending Dec. 31. The shale boom has given the...

Crude oil inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, the primary crude oil storage location in the United States and the delivery location for the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures contract, declined 12 million barrels (29%) over the past seven weeks. On March 14, 2014, Cushing inventories were 30 million barrels, 19 million barrels lower than a year ago and the lowest level since early 2012. The recent drawdown of stocks at Cushing resulted from (1) the startup of TransCanada's Cushing Marketlink pipeline, which is now moving crude from Cushing to the U.S. Gulf Coast; (2)...

Some now ask service firms to come into projects at the start, ditch some tailor-made designs in favour of standardised solutions and stay with projects longer to reduce the number of contractors involved, moves that reduce costs but favour bigger, integrated firms. Oil service shares have suffered over the past year, with European firms hit the most. Analysts at UBS estimate they trade at 14 percent discount to their 5-year average with a further downside risk as investors adjust to a lower growth scenario. "It is evident that the problem is not the services making supernormal returns but rather, given...

Development of the Johan Sverdrup oilfield in the North Sea may be delayed by a year and cost more than planned if Norway's parliament insists on having it be powered from shore, the Dagens Naeringsliv daily newspaper reported on Wednesday. The biggest North Sea field find in decades, it has reserves of up to 2.9 billion barrels of oil equivalent and is expected to start production in 2019 at an initial cost estimated at 100 billion to 120 billion crowns ($16.4 billion-$19.7 billion). Statoil has committed to power the first phase from shore, a move in line with the government's...

...Port authorities nationwide pay into a fund designed to cover maintenance costs. The Port of Houston pays about $100 million annually into the fund, but gets back only about $25 million — about half of the $50 million needed to maintain one of the world’s busiest channels, said Roger Guenther, the Port of Houston’s executive director. The port typically handles about 70 ships daily, plus 300 to 400 tugboats and barges. And Gulf of Mexico traffic — especially of large ships — is expected to increase with the opening next year of the Panama Canal expansion. Ports will need to...

Despite major accidents in the past year, U.S. oil companies must keep using the nation’s railroads to move crude to markets while they build a much more extensive pipeline network, an energy economics professor said Tuesday. Oil refineries on the East Coast have virtually no access to the light, sweet crude extracted in Texas’ surging oil fields because there are no pipelines to carry the oil there. It is generally too expensive to ship the crude from the Gulf Coast to buyers in the northeastern U.S. because of quirks in century-old laws, forcing refineries in New Jersey to buy oil...

Gasoline prices have been largely unchanged in the days since an oil spill temporarily closed the Houston Ship Channel and prompted worries that lower refinery output might reduce fuel supplies and force up the price at the pump. Nationally, unleaded gasoline sold for an average of just over $3.53 per gallon Tuesday, according to AAA, up less than a penny from the day before the spill. Houston-area gasoline sold for $3.38 per gallon, similarly unchanged despite the channel’s temporary closure. Refiners haven’t said much about how their operations were affected by the waterway’s closure, which was lifted partly on Tuesday....

Just before 10:00 CST on Tuesday morning, the Houston Ship Channel reopened exclusively to barge traffic after a fuel oil spill on Saturday shut down the waterway that enables tankers to supply over one-tenth of US refining capacity. Planes were to begin flying after sunrise on Tuesday across Galveston Bay to assess the location of 4,000 barrels of heavy fuel oil spilled after a Kirby Inland Marine oil barge and a cargo ship collided on Saturday afternoon, the Coast Guard said. Additionally, the Coast Guard prepared inspection and decontamination stations for vessels entering and exiting the channel once it reopens....

Exxon Mobil Corp. said Monday that the shutdown of the Houston Ship Channel has affected production at its refinery complex in Baytown, the second-largest of its kind in the U.S. Exxon Mobil spokesman Todd Spitler would not disclose how much of a drop in output the company expects and other oil companies generally would not detail potential problems resulting from the port shutdown. The Houston Ship Channel remains closed indefinitely after nearly 170,000 gallons of heavy oil spilled into the Galveston Bay on Saturday afternoon. Authorities are hopeful that the channel could open to some traffic on Monday, said Patrick...

Texans increased their use of natural gas to fuel cars and trucks in 2013, but reduced its use to power lights and appliances, according to new federal data. Natural gas used for vehicle fuel in Texas jumped by more than 16 percent between 2012 and 2013, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show. Meanwhile, less electricity was generated from gas in 2013, down by nearly 7 percent. That reversed a trend seen in recent years as utilities shifted from coal-fired to natural gas-fired power plants to take advantage of low-cost natural gas, with its price in the Untied States...