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Indian PM Narendra Modi and Japan's Shinzo Abe have agreed at a summit in Tokyo to accelerate talks on a nuclear energy pact. They also agreed to strengthen security ties and Mr Modi welcomed Japan's easing of restrictions on exports of defence equipment and technology. Mr Modi is on his first major foreign visit since winning May's election. The trip is being seen as an attempt by the two democracies to balance the rising weight of China across Asia. Mr Modi arrived in Japan on Saturday and visited the former imperial city of Kyoto over the weekend. "The two prime...

Energy officials in Saudi Arabia announced Tuesday that they are embarking on a plan to build a nuclear reactor “for peaceful purposes,” Israel’s NRG News reported, quoting the London-based “Al-Hayat” Arabic-language daily. Senior sources in the Muslim kingdom told the newspaper that construction of the reactor is expected to begin before the end of the calendar year. “Construction of the first Saudi nuclear reactor will take ten years, according to the plan, although we hope that we can complete the task in less time,” the newspaper said, quoting Saudi sources. The kingdom’s ultimate goal, the report stated, is to establish...

Armed pirates robbed a petroleum products tanker near Ivory Coast's port of Abidjan, a maritime agency and a private security advisor said on Wednesday, in an indication of the increasing mobility of Nigeria-based gangs. The raid on the tanker came just a day after two failed pirate attacks that occurred just hours apart in waters off Nigeria's southeastern coast, according to the same sources. Pirate attacks in West Africa's Gulf of Guinea, a significant source of oil, cocoa and metals for world markets, have almost doubled from last year, jacking up insurance costs for shipping companies. The vast majority of...

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We hadn’t written about the monthly EIA statistics on US oil supply and demand for a while because they’d gotten kind of dull. The big movements recorded month after month, particularly in product export growth and net import dependence, had fallen into a bit of a predictable range. That changed in June. The EIA released numbers from that month today. US petroleum import dependence in June dropped to 4.659 million b/d. That’s only the second time in the post-shale era that number had been less than 5 million b/d. And the last time the US recorded a number that low...

Five people have been arrested after demonstrated blocked railroad tracks at a Burlington Northern Santa Fe yard in Everett. Railroad spokesman Gus Melonas says two women and three men were taken to the Snohomish County Jail after refusing to leave a protest of train shipments of oil and coal and proposed export terminals in the Northwest... The group Rising Tide Seattle erected a tripod of poles over the tracks with a woman perched on top....

At this stage, companies are building programs internally to address how they will adopt Internet of Things technologies and how to get the most benefits in terms of managing risks, reducing costs and bringing in new revenues, said Serhii Konovalov, who leads Cisco’s O&G Global Industry Solutions Practice and O&G Innovations, in an interview with Rigzone. Officials with Software AG are also seeing oil and gas companies starting to lay the framework and mapping their business processes to prepare their organizations for Internet of Things monitoring solutions. Software AG, which focuses on helping companies, including oil and gas companies, become...

Two separate tropical storms closed in on Mexico from both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans on Tuesday, risking a double hit on the country a year after a pair of storms converged to cause major flooding that killed over 100 people. Tropical Storm Dolly, which formed in the southern Gulf of Mexico early Tuesday, is likely to strengthen slightly in the next 24 hours until it reaches the mainland, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. The severe weather has already forced the closure of two of the major crude oil export terminals used by Mexican state-run oil company Pemex....

Federal and state regulators have cleared the way for Formosa Plastics Corp. to begin construction on a $2 billion expansion of its petrochemical complex in Point Comfort. The approvals come two years after the private U.S. affiliate of the Taiwan-based industrial company announced plans to build new units and expand its capacity on 372 acres within its existing 1,600-acre site 120 miles southwest of Houston near Port Lavaca. It’s the fourth expansion since the Point Comfort plant went online in 1983. The Environmental Protection Agency issued final greenhouse gas permits and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality greenlighted the environmental...

Full Title: Dominion, Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas and AGL Resources Form Joint Venture to Own Proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline - $4.5 billion-$5 billion pipeline would bring 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day to North Carolina and Virginia - 'Transformational' project provides growing Mid-Atlantic markets a new route for access to competitive, domestic energy supplies - Investment would create thousands of jobs, promote economic development and cleaner air, increase state and local tax revenue - Pipeline expected to be in service by late 2018, pending regulatory approvals Four major U.S. energy companies – Dominion (NYSE: D), Duke...

The impact of higher oil and gas activity, fueled by a run-up in crude prices, continued to flow into the general economies of Midland and Odessa in July. Karr Ingham, the Amarillo economist who prepares the Midland-Odessa Regional Economic Index for Midland Development Corp. and Security Bank, said the July index is 6.2 percent higher than the previous July. This is a higher increase than June, which was 5.8 percent above June 2013 levels. Ingham said the increased momentum comes at a time when the Midland-Odessa economy had been reporting shrinking growth rates. “It’s not like we were really seeing...

The Iraqi oil ministry said on Thursday it would challenge a U.S. court decision that stopped U.S. Marshals from seizing some one million barrels of disputed Kurdish oil docked near Texas. On Monday, a U.S. district court ruled in favour of a request by Iraq's Kurdish region that a demand by the Iraqi government for U.S. authorities to seize the Kurdish oil shipment be scrapped. However, the court gave Baghdad 10 days to resubmit its case. "The ministry of oil is emphasising that it is preparing the amended request and will forward it in the required period," the oil ministry...

The federal government will resume oil and gas leasing in California following a report released Thursday that found little scientific evidence that fracking and similar extraction techniques are dangerous. The Bureau of Land Management said the report — and additional environmental reviews — will allow it to begin leasing on public land next year. The announcement is welcome news for energy companies that have been shut out of the oil-rich San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast. But critics, including environmental organizations whose lawsuits led to a judge's order to halt leasing last year, said the analysis was rushed by the...

Morgan Stanley has quietly filed plans to build and run one of the first U.S. compressed natural gas export facilities, the first sign the bank is plunging back into physical commodity markets even as it sells its physical oil business. In a 23-page application to the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy submitted in May, the Wall Street bank outlined a proposal to build, own and operate a compression and container loading facility near Freeport, Texas, which will have capacity to ship 60 billion cubic feet a year of compressed natural gas (CNG). While the size of the...

China's energy heavyweights Sinopec Corp and PetroChina have upgraded their outlook on the country's shale gas industry, citing steadily declining costs, but stopped short of predicting a near-term boom. China, estimated to hold the world's largest technically recoverable shale resources, is hoping to replicate the shale boom that has transformed the energy landscape of the United States. Industry experts caution that it would be much more difficult for China to monetise its shale gas reserves than the U.S. as it faces serious challenges from water shortages to complicated geological structure and a lack of infrastructure. But top executives at China's...

Growing global demand is pushing a flurry of new construction, especially on the Texas Gulf Coast, of units for direct manufacture of propylene — a key chemical building block historically derived as a byproduct of other processes . In North America, propylene primarily has come from petrochemical plants using petroleum-derived naphtha as a feedstock. But that’s changing as the plants switch to ethane, a natural gas liquid that is now abundant and cheap because of the nation’s surging natural gas production. The ethane feedstock, however, produces little propylene. Propylene supplies have declined, contributing to occasional shortages, according to Enterprise Products...

Valero Energy Corp. has restarted production at a corn ethanol plant in Indiana that was shuttered more than two years ago by its previous owner. San Antonio-based Valero bought the plant in March from Illinois-based Aventine Renewable Energy Holdings Inc. for $34 million, boosting the number of its ethanol plants to 11. Valero has been preparing the plant for a restart since its purchase. Because the plant has been shuttered for almost two years, “it took a lot of preparation and maintenance,” Valero spokesman Bill Day said, but the company didn’t have to add any new equipment. During the time...

The independent companies at the forefront of the U.S. shale boom will finally earn enough from selling oil and gas to cover their capital expenditures next year, for the first time since 2008. Free cash flow, which measures operating cash flow minus capital spending, for the 25 leading independent oil and gas producers is expected to show a surplus of $2.4 billion in 2015, according to a consensus forecast in the Financial Times. That compares with a shortfall of around $9 billion in 2013 and $32 billion in 2012. ("Shale oil and gas producers' finances lift growth hopes" FT, Aug...

The amount of crude oil and refined petroleum products moved by U.S. railroads increased 9% during the first seven months of this year compared with the same period in 2013. In July, monthly average carloadings of oil and petroleum products were near 16,000 carloads per week, according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR). The increase in oil volumes transported by rail reflects rising U.S. crude oil production, which reached an estimated 8.5 million barrels per day in June for the first time since July 1986. AAR estimates that more than half of the nearly 460,000 carloads tracked in its...

Wintershall's head of exploration and production warned Thursday that Germany's 'Energiewende' (or Energy Transition) dream of pursuing an economy powered by the wind and the sun is in danger of turning into a nightmare. Speaking to energy journalists at the ONS exhibition in Stavanger, Norway, Wintershall Executive Director Martin Bachmann said he was concerned about figures recently published by Statistics Norway that showed overall investment in Norway's petroleum sector will drop by EUR 6 billion ($7.9 billion) next year. "That is actually bad news for Europe's security of supply and I think Germany – as the biggest market in Europe...