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With crude gushing from the Permian Basin, companies are ramping up efforts to build pipelines and better capitalize on the production surge. Drillers have been producing oil in the Permian for some eight decades. But in recent years, the Texas formation’s central region, which consists of the Delaware and Midland basins, became a hotbed for shale oil. The Permian is now the top oil-producing area in the U.S., accounting for 18% of the nation’s total output in 2013. Based on data from the Energy Information Administration, the Permian recorded production of 1.35 million barrels per day last year. The region...

Ukraine doesn’t need Russia to take it down—Kiev is doing fine destroying itself, most recently with a new tax code that doubles taxes for private gas producers and promises to irreparably cripple new investment in the energy sector at a time when reform and outside investment were the country’s only hope. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on August 1 signed off on a new tax code that effectively doubles the tax private gas producers in Ukraine will have to pay, calling into question any new investment, as well as commitment from key producers already operating in the country. The stated goal...

The Mexican Congress has passed sweeping legislation intended to revitalize the country’s anemic energy industry by opening it to private competition and ending a 75-year state monopoly. After weeks of debate and a constitutional amendment, legislators approved this week the majority of the new laws and are expected to finalize the remaining items in the coming days. The energy overhaul is the most sweeping of a broad set of economic measures promised by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. Mexico’s oil and gas industry has been largely left out of the latest oil boom, despite the general consensus that the country...

Natural gas production in the Marcellus Region exceeded 15 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) through July, the first time ever recorded, according to EIA's latest Drilling Productivity Report. The Marcellus Region, mostly located in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, is the largest producing shale gas basin in the United States, accounting for almost 40% of U.S. shale gas production. Marcellus Region production has increased dramatically over the past four years, increasing from 2 Bcf/d in 2010 to its current level. The rig count in the Marcellus Region has remained steady at around 100 rigs over the past 10 months. Given...

Biofuels Power Corp. plans to build a small-scale plant to convert natural gas to synthetic crude on a former power plant site south of downtown Houston as it looks to capitalize on abundant supplies of cheap natural gas, the company announced Monday. The gas-to-liquids plant is a pilot project, the first step in the Humble-based company’s plans to build several small plants at oil fields across the U.S. to capture and convert natural gas now stranded at well sites that don’t have processing or transportation infrastructure to carry the gas to market. Advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have...

Shell announced today that it has declared force majeure on its unconventional gas exploration activities in eastern Ukraine, near the site where flight MH17 crashed. However, it's too early to tell what impact the latest round of EU and US sanctions on Russia for its actions in Ukraine will have on the Anglo-Dutch major, sources said. Shell has been engaging in shale gas exploration in Ukraine and its Russian assets include a stake in Sakhalin-2, one of the largest LNG projects in the world, where it is working with Gazprom to expand the project. Shell CEO Ben van Beurden was...

An ordinary, long-scheduled journey of an oil drilling rig into Arctic waters is turning into a major political exercise, attracting international scrutiny and creating a dilemma for ExxonMobil. Exxon, the top U.S. oil major and the world's most valued oil company, is bringing the rig, called West Alpha, from Norway to the Russian Arctic. It is hoping for a major discovery in the Kara Sea with Russian partner Rosneft. The journey has begun just as the United States has slapped the toughest sanctions yet on Russia, including on Rosneft, over escalating violence in Ukraine. Further sanctions are likely after the...

Since the mid-1970s, the United States has run a deficit in merchandise trade, meaning that payments for imports exceeded receipts for exports. This large and growing deficit on the merchandise trade balance reached a maximum of $883 billion in the second quarter of 2008. As a result of the recession, dramatic declines of imports in excess of exports during the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 reduced the merchandise trade deficit by 49%, to $449 billion in the second quarter of 2009. This trend of declining imports resulted in the lowest quarterly deficit level since early...

The Obama administration on Friday gave the oil industry the green light to use air guns and sonic sensors to search for possible oil and gas under Atlantic waters, overriding environmentalists concerned that the seismic research can harm whales and other marine life. Although geophysical research companies will still have to apply for individual permits to conduct seismic studies along the south- and mid-Atlantic coast — and undergo more rigorous environmental scrutiny of their specific plans — the Interior Department’s formal decision opens the door for the activity. Friday’s move also helps pave the way for possible drilling off the...

Mississippi Power is looking for ways to make a positive economic impact as the Kemper Coal Plant is slowly nearing its finish line. The facility has completed construction and is now in the process of testing its equipment. And coal engineers say as they begin, they're doing their best to hire locally. "We sign long-term contracts with our customer," mine engineer Matt Jones says. "We've got a 40-year contract with Mississippi Power for this operation. We're part of the community, and we want to make sure we're hiring our neighbors as much we can." At its peak, the coal plant...

Petroleum engineers are among the best paid professionals in the United States. Only chief executives and some specialist doctors earned more last year, according to federal government pay data. Petroleum engineers were paid an average of $132,000 a year, with the top 10 percent on more than $187,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). These figures include everyone from the newest graduates to the most experienced engineers with decades of experience, and are based on median earnings in May 2013. Petroleum engineers earned almost four times as much as the average employee across the economy, who was on...

Denton late Tuesday night became the latest jurisdiction to announce a referendum on a drilling technique, joining Colorado and New York in allowing voters to decide where hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas may take place. This a deeply worrying trend that mixes misinformation with a not-in-my-backyard attitude that too often ignores science, engineering and the nation's need for energy. In many ways, though, the drilling companies and state regulators have themselves to blame for public outrage by failing to quickly and transparently address the concerns of local residents. First, let me say I've spoken to a lot of people...

Energy companies currently leave about 95 percent of the crude in the ground at today’s unconventional oil wells, but they face major technological challenges in boosting recovery rates, a Schlumberger scientist said Tuesday. Robert Kleinberg, a fellow with the oilfield services firm, bemoaned the current 5 percent recovery factor at tight oil wells, where crude is pulled from the pores of extremely dense rock formations. Geologists and engineers are actively looking for ways to boost the figure, but traditional methods applied at more conventional oil wells — such as pumping steam underground and flooding the formations with water — don’t...

Fuel costs, which depend on vehicle fuel economy, miles driven, and fuel price, are an important factor in vehicle purchasing decisions. However, fuel economy improvement exhibits diminishing returns in fuel savings. For example, switching from a 10-mile-per-gallon (mpg) vehicle to a 15-mpg vehicle saves more fuel and results in greater fuel cost savings than switching from a 25-mpg vehicle to a 75-mpg vehicle. The fuel and cost savings of improving fuel economy from 12 mpg to 15 mpg are the same as increasing from 30 mpg to 60 mpg. Much of the reduction in fuel consumption and fuel cost comes...

Houston outpaced every city in the nation in annual wage growth during the second quarter, thanks largely to a bump in oil and gas-industry pay, according to PayScale. The Seattle-based pay tracker said the city’s 3 percent rise in annual wages beat the national average of 1.8 percent from April to June. That’s the second consecutive quarter that Houston wage-earners beat the national average, after a sluggish 2013 that saw pay in the energy capital flatten. (Average wage earners weren’t the only ones who had flat paydays last year: Some compensation packages for the chief executives of oil and gas...

The Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico is the nation's most prolific oil producing area. Six formations within the basin have provided the bulk of Permian's 60% increase in oil output since 2007. Crude oil production in the Permian Basin has increased from a low point of 850,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2007 to 1,350,000 bbl/d in 2013. Largely as a result of this growth, crude oil production from Permian Basin counties has exceeded production from the federal offshore Gulf of Mexico region since March 2013, making the Permian the largest crude oil producing region in the United...

Call it a double whammy for the planet or simply irony with a capital “I.” As the invaluable Michael Klare, TomDispatch regular and author of The Race for What’s Left, points out today, if you scan the planet for conflict, what you’ll find from Syria and Iraq to the South China Sea are a series of energy wars -- fossil-fuel conflicts to be exact. At present, despite some hopeful signs, this crazed planet of ours is still a ravenous beast that only fossil fuels can sate. No question that conflicts and wars are terrible things. Just consider the million new...

A wave of gas-to-liquids investments and other U.S. industrial projects will likely boost demand for natural gas by 19 to 31 percent through the end of the decade, a new study shows. After shale gas flooded U.S. markets, chemical makers and other firms planned enough gas-intensive industrial projects – now under construction or obtaining permits – to boost daily industrial gas demand from 19.6 to 23.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day in 2020, according to the University of Texas’ Center for Energy Economics. All told, that’s an $83 billion venture. If all 144 proposed industrial projects are built,...

The first hurricane of the Atlantic season has hit the North Carolina coast, a wet and windy spoiler of the July Fourth holiday for thousands of Americans as authorities ordered them to evacuate exposed areas. Hurricane Arthur crossed the coast near Cape Lookout at the southern end of North Carolina's Outer Banks at 11:15 p.m. EDT (0315 GMT) on Thursday, with maximum sustained winds of 100 miles per hour (160 kph). This earned it Category 2 status on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Moving northeast at 22 mph (35.6 kph), Arthur is...

Like most of its Asian neighbors, the Philippines has been a net energy importer for decades. The country’s dependence on hydrocarbons is relatively lower as compared to South Korea or Singapore as it has alternatives such as geothermal, hydropower and other renewable sources for electricity generation. But rising energy consumption and the expected depletion of gas resource at the offshore Malampaya field – the country’s major gas development – in a decade’s time has induced the Philippines to seek alternative energy supplies. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) import, together with the accompanying gas receiving facilities, is one of the options being...