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Tumbling oil prices could prove to be a boon for the many Asian economies that depend on crude imports. With oil at its lowest price in more than five years, governments in countries such as India and Indonesia can spend money on much-needed infrastructure and other growth projects without stoking inflation. Falling crude prices also give China’s flagging economy a boost, allowing its central bank—and others in the region—to ease rates even as a recovering U.S. looks to do the reverse, economists say. Combined with loose monetary policy and a gradual recovery in global demand for goods and services, falling...

Iraq's oil exports reached their highest level in decades in December, the oil ministry's spokesman said on Saturday, but vital revenues were being hit by the plummeting prices of crude. Iraq exported 91.141 million barrels of oil in December for an average of 2.94 million barrels per day, the highest daily average since 1980, Assem Jihad told AFP, citing initial figures. December exports were far and away the highest in 2014, eclipsing the previous best month by more than 11 million barrels, according to ministry figures. But revenues were $5.247 billion, only up slightly on November and much lower than...

en Chorn had a good vacation in Minnesota last month, making it to a Vikings game, a hockey game in Duluth and getting engaged. But while he was gone, the price of oil hit him personally. “While on vacation, I got a call from someone who’s covering for me and said, ‘Hey your rig’s being laid down,’” said Chorn, who does geology work on rigs for Sunburst Consulting. He’s had a slow six weeks since then. The oil price drop will impact fringe regions in the Bakken the most, experts said, because the oil there costs more to extract. “I...

State oil giant Saudi Aramco has suspended plans to build a US$2 billion clean fuels plant at its largest oil refinery in Ras Tanura, three industry sources said. The energy project appears to be one of the first suspended in Saudi Arabia in response to the halving of the oil price in the last six months. The Ras Tanura clean fuels project, including a naphtha hydrotreater, was to be part of a second phase of upgrades to Aramco’s refineries, and was originally due to go on stream in 2016. “They withdrew the bidding,” said one source familiar with the matter,...

With oil prices sliding downward, Jim Gray — a veteran of Alberta’s energy business — provides perspective. 1. There has been a lot of gloom and doom over the oil price slide. What do you make of the 50 per cent drop in the price of oil since June? There are many precedents for a 50 per cent slide in oil prices. Just since 1983, there have been four principal slides. When you look at the history of oil prices since 1983, you’ll see the rate of recovery is tied to how quickly prices fell. In 1986, prices dropped between...

Despite tumbling gas prices, North Carolina's tax on gasoline went up starting Thursday. State leaders still said there won't be enough money in the coffers to cover the transportation projects statewide. Fabian Escoto fills up his tank about once a week and word that the gas tax is increasing didn’t rattle him too much. “As long as it's not too much, I don't think it's going to affect a whole lot of people,” Escoto said. North Carolina's tax on a gallon of gas increased by a penny to 37.5 cents – the highest gas tax in the South and one...

Russia's 2014 oil output hit a post-Soviet record high average of 10.58 million barrels per day (bpd), rising by 0.7 percent helped by small non-state producers, Energy Ministry data showed on Friday. Oil and gas condensate production in December hit 10.67 million bpd, also a record high since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The data showed Russia's so-called small producers, mostly privately held, increased their output by 11 percent to just over 1 million barrels per day. Crude oil exports via state monopoly Transneft fell 5 percent to 195.5 million tonnes due to rising domestic demand and refinery runs....

Cheap oil could set off a wave of corporate fire sales over the next two years if oil prices remain low, investors and financial experts says, putting a patchwork of oil wells from Texas to North Dakota in the hands of bigger, richer players. A number of small independent oil firms may have to hand over the keys to oil-pumping assets or their entire companies if they can't pay back billions in risky debt that has fueled hydraulic fracturing and a big gain in U.S. tight-oil output over the past few years. Oil prices, experts say, would need to stabilize...

It’s no surprise that the number of U.S. oil rigs moves up and down with the price of oil, but the chart above offers an interesting glance at the relationship. Baker Hughes on Monday said the total number of U.S. rotary rigs fell by 35 to 1,840 in the week ended Dec. 26, the fifth consecutive weekly decline, bringing the total to its lowest level since April. “If OPEC’s goal is to slow U.S. oil production by dumping cheap oil into our market, they are having some success,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst Price Futures Group in Chicago.

The U.S. shale boom has drawn thousands of workers to the remote oil fields of states like North Dakota and Texas, enticing laborers with lucrative pay packages and flooding sparsely populated towns with new residents. That’s been the pattern since 2007, but analysts say labor needs for drilling companies could fall off dramatically as crude oil prices continue to plunge. On Tuesday, a Redditor under the screen name “oil_trash,” who said he was a flowback operator in the Midland Basin region of Texas, started an “Ask Me Anything” thread on the social networking site. For several hours, Reddit users filled...

...The two measures are clearest signs yet that the administration is ready to allow more of the booming U.S. shale oil production to be sold overseas,.... Output of very light oil has been especially strong, leading to a glut that threatens to overwhelm domestic demand. The constraints helped fuel bumper profits for refiners such as Valero Energy Corp and PBF Energy Inc, but angered drillers such as Hess Corp that say they were selling at a discount.... The steps on Tuesday were "certainly not designed to add or detract from what can be exported. We are trying to make the...

Oil producers and traders alike are desperately looking for a sign that the current oil price slide is about to bottom out but a rebel attack on a Libyan oil field failed to fit the bill. This week, traders might be tempted to focus on the fact that Saudi Arabia’s 2015 annual budget would need an average of $80 oil for the year to balance its books as a sign that the kingdom thinks prices will rebound soon. But the kingdom has historically missed the mark between budget making and actual oil prices. Famously, in 1998, the last time Saudi...

As 2014 winds down, many unanswered questions swirl in the industry. How deep and long will this downturn be? What companies will be most impacted? What will the ripple effects of lower oil prices look like? Answers to these questions will become more clear next year, but today we got one new answer. Many man camps, the semi-permanent housing facilities supporting the influx of workers in busy oil plays, will be folding up and disbanding. The leading man camp company has announced that it will be closing lodges in Canada, evaluating US rooms in light of a lower occupancy outlook,...

Alongside Apache and Shell Egypt, Cairo will pursue the country’s first shale extraction project, complete with $30 to $40 million in investments in hopes of reviving the country’s ailing oil and gas sector as domestic demand continues to grow.... The move comes as Egypt continues to seek out solutions to a challenging energy environment, including waning interest from foreign energy firms and declining production. According to press reports, Egyptian gas exports saw a 73.4 percent decline July of this year,...the decline also hit crude oil exports, reducing it to $350.7 million for the summer month from $398.8 million the year...

Two oil storage tanks remain on fire at Libya's Es Sider oil port while two others have collapsed almost a week after clashes there sparked the blaze, a spokesman for state National Oil Corp (NOC) said on Tuesday. Fires at two other storage tanks at Libya's biggest oil port had been extinguished but the damage was unclear, NOC spokesman Mohamed El Harari said. An industry source said at least 1.2 million barrels of oil had been destroyed by the fire which broke out after clashes reported on Dec. 25 between armed factions allied to Libya's internationally recognised government and a...

Algeria’s oil minister on Sunday called on OPEC to cut production and raise the price of oil, which has plunged dramatically in the last six months. The call by Youcef Yousfi to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Algeria is a member, comes as the country is struggling to deal with a halving of oil prices from $120 barrel to $60 a barrel. “For us, OPEC has to intervene to correct the imbalance and cut production to bring up prices and defend the income of its member states,” Yousfi said in remarks carried by the state news agency....

For a symbolic issue, the Keystone pipeline has sure caused a lot of damage—to Canadian-American relations, to Democrats, to President Obama. And it feeds, underscores, or reflects a variety of political divisions, some of them quite bitter. I’ll get to Keystone’s victims shortly, but first the explanation of why the issue is purely symbolic. If the pipeline is built, it will carry oil from northern Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast. If it is not built, the crude oil will be transported either to Canada’s west coast or to New Brunswick, a maritime province in the east, where it...

Texas manufacturers are worried about what plummeting oil prices could mean for business in 2015, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ monthly survey. Dallas Fed data showed that manufacturing activity increased in December even as demand moderated. The Texas production index, a measure of the state’s manufacturing climate, increased from six to 15.6 since November, the Dallas Fed said. But other measures showed that demand slowed: the new orders index fell from 5.6 to 1.3; and the survey’s composite index, expected to come in at 9, missed the mark at 4.1. Several manufacturing executives expressed pessimism over how...

Oil-field lodgings company Civeo Corp. said it has slashed its workforce in the United States by 45 percent and in Canada by 30 percent as it prepares for weaker occupancy rates at its oil-field camps next year. The Houston-based company had more than 4,000 employees when it spun off from oil field services firm Oil States International in June. The announcement is the latest oil-field services layoffs in reaction to falling oil prices and anticipated oil-company budget cuts. Houston-based Hercules Offshore said it would reduce its headcount by 324 and oil field giant Halliburton said it would cut 1,000 jobs...

A leak on a major Russian oil pipeline caused a spill in the Black Sea near the port of Tuapse on Wednesday where officials said stormy weather was hampering efforts to assess and respond to the mishap. "Some quantity of oil has spilled into the sea," Sergei Proskurin, first deputy captain of the port of Tuapse, told Reuters. He said the size of the spill was unclear and that emergencies services were working to deploy temporary floating barriers to contain the spill but were being delayed by the stormy conditions. Tuapse is a busy industrial and oil port but is...