Free Republic

More layoffs have hit the Texas oil field services industry. Industrial conglomerate GE notified state regulators last week it will lay off 330 employees in the East Texas manufacturing operations it acquired from oil-field pump maker Lufkin Industries. It’s the latest sign the collapse of petroleum prices is forcing oil companies to jettison workers and adjust to much leaner profits. The U.S. benchmark oil price has halved since June. In a letter to the Texas Workforce Commission disclosed Monday, GE said it is cutting 45 percent of the manufacturing, sales, engineering and other jobs at its Buck Creek plant starting...

Steelworker strikes that began Sunday at seven U.S. oil refineries and two chemical plants have a slim chance of pumping up gasoline or crude prices dramatically in the near future, analysts say. Talks between the United Steelworkers union and big oil companies led by Royal Dutch Shell broke down Saturday after the two groups couldn’t reach an agreement on – among other contractual issues – the overtime that workers have to take when others are called away to train new recruits, a point “when the fatigue sets in,” union spokeswoman Lynn Hancock said. But the refineries, analysts said, can keep...

Mary Noriega heard there would be chicken. She hated being herded “like cattle,” she said, standing for hours in a line of more than 1,500 people hoping to buy food, as soldiers with side arms checked identification cards to make sure no one tried to buy basic items more than once or twice a week. But Ms. Noriega, a laboratory assistant with three children, said she had no choice, ticking off the inventory in her depleted refrigerator: coffee and corn flour. Things had gotten so bad, she said, that she had begun bartering with neighbors to put food on the...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has published a final environmental impact statement for the agency’s conservation plan for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In that EIS the agency has selected a plan alternative that recommends that Congress should designate the entire refuge as wilderness, (see map page 23) including the coastal plain area, sometimes known as the 1002 area. This wilderness designation would place the entire refuge off limits for oil and gas exploration and development. Land in the immediate vicinity of the coastal village of Kaktovik would be excluded from the wilderness designation but would still require Congressional...

Before the start of the 2014 NFL regular season, University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona, home to Super Bowl XLIX, retrofitted 312 high-performance light-emitting diode (LED) stadium light fixtures. The LED fixtures replaced more than 780 metal halide high-intensity discharge (HID) fixtures and will illuminate the field during the Super Bowl on February 1. University of Phoenix Stadium was the first stadium in the NFL to light its playing field using only LEDs. The new lights draw approximately 310 kilowatts of energy compared with the 1,240 kilowatts required by the old system, a savings of about 75%. Assuming an electricity...

Horizontal Drilling and Hydraulic Fracturing, represent technology developed in the 1980’s, are responsible for extracting Shale Gas and Shale Oil [Unconventional Liquid Hydrocarbons] from previously non-productive shale formations about one mile below the surface. As this technology was applied throughout the USA environmental upsets occurred (e.g. well water contamination in Weis County TX and Methane leaks in Dimrock PA. Recent peer review studies [Cornel, Stanford, Duke, Texas University, Penn State University and Ohio State University] have shown that these incidents could have been avoided by maintaining proper well integrity. State regulatory agencies now require adherence to industry standards, to ensure...

What the current oil price slump means for world oil supply is starting to emerge. "Layoffs," "cutbacks," "delays," and "cancellations" are words one sees in headlines concerning the oil industry every day. That can only mean one thing in the long run: less supply later on than would otherwise have been the case. But perhaps the most important thing you need to understand about the coming oil production cutbacks is where they are going to come from, namely Canada and the United States. Why is this important? For one very simple reason. Without growth in production from these two countries,...

As many energy industry companies revise their capital expenditures downward for 2015 amid the steep drop in crude oil values, they are making a variety of decisions with regard to worker compensation, according to Aon Hewitt, a global human resource company that tracks corporate performance, reward and talent. The slide in crude oil prices picked up speed late in 2014, about the time that financial decisions for 2015 were being made. As prices continued to dip, many companies within the industry revisited the budgeting process early in the new year in light of the current reality of sub-$50/barrel crude oil....

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the U.S. Coast Guard are preparing to investigate an unmanned platform off the coast of Louisiana that has been damaged, BSEE said in a statement. The platform is operated by Energy XXI, GOM, LLC, and is located in 50 feet of water in South Timbalier (ST) Block 27 in the Gulf of Mexico, about 5 miles south of port Fourchon, Louisiana. Energy XXI reported to BSEE at approximately 4:30 a.m. that the ST 27 IA platform had been damaged, and that the damage was possibly caused by a vessel. There was...

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. has turned a 7,200-ton cell spar hull into a dark cave-like habitat for fish, sea anemones and other deep-sea creatures 200 miles off the coast of Louisiana. The Red Hawk spar facility, which began its operations in the Gulf of Mexico a decade ago, is a series of 560-feet-long steel cylinders used to keep Anadarko’s deep-water natural gas production equipment afloat. The Woodlands oil explorer hopes its $30 million investment to transform it into an artificial reef in late September will be a boon to the fishing industry that supports local economies along the Gulf Coast, said...

So your off week is about over with. It went by too fast again and there is some work to be done before going back to the rig. You still need to do your laundry and pray that at least half of that oil base will come off this time in the wash. You still need to go food shopping - you know the usual grub: protein shakes, cold cuts, bread, eggs, steaks, etc. And, you need to fill up that darn 20+ gallon tank of gas for your 4x4 work truck that you're going to drive on your way...

Global oil majors say they are demanding cheaper but better services from engineering and service companies, or simply taking work back in-house, after losing hundreds of billions on cost overruns in the last five years. Cost overruns and delays were the main reason why oil majors generated less cash than shareholders expected when oil was over $100 per barrel.... While keen to avoid accusations of ganging up to force terms on suppliers, they are exploring measures that are likely to put further pressure on services companies such as Schlumberger and Halliburton, which have already cut thousands of jobs as business...

Renewable-fuels advocates are promising to spend millions putting ethanol back in the debate for Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus next year as cheap oil and setbacks in biofuels policy make the additive less central to voters. Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, backed by state corn-grower and renewable-fuels associations and the Washington-based biofuels lobby Growth Energy, on Thursday formed America’s Renewable Future, to make the Renewable Fuels Standard an issue in the 2016 race. The Iowa caucus is set for early January. “We are designing it to look like a presidential campaign, but the RFS is our candidate,” said Eric Branstad, the governor’s son...

Saudi Arabia has charted a long-term course to drive down oil prices and maintain its major share of the global market—and a change of who is on the throne in Riyadh won’t likely alter this course, energy experts said. Even after the death of King Abdullah, announced early Friday, the kingdom is likely to continue to pump crude in the face of a global glut, which has helped push prices down by more than 55% since last June. Surrounded by unrest and uncertainty in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is protecting itself by exploiting its big advantages—huge oil reserves and...

OPEC defended on Wednesday its decision not to intervene to halt the oil price collapse, shrugging off warnings by top energy firms that the cartel's policy could lead to a huge supply shortage as investments dry up. The strain the halving of oil prices since June is putting on producers was laid bare when non-member Oman voiced its first direct, public criticism of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' November decision not to cut production but instead to focus on market share. Oil prices have collapsed to below $50 a barrel as a result of a large supply glut,...

talian oil group Eni has warned oil could shoot up to $200 a barrel if the Opec cartel fails to cut supplies. Eni's chief executive, Claudio Descalzi, said the oil industry would cut capital spending by 10-13% this year because of slumping prices. He said that would create longer-term shortages and sharp price rises in four to five years' time. Mr Descalzi was speaking at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos. He said: "Opec is like the central bank for oil which must give stability to the oil prices to be able to invest in a...

Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami was so consumed by running he combined two of his loves to write a book called ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running‘. Although an odd concept, it’s actually quite a compelling read. Not only did I think this title was really great (although paraphrased from Raymond Carver), but it also reminded me of my own rather obsessive compulsions. So here are some of the things that I currently think about when I think about crude oil.–Global economic growth. Crude oil demand growth is highly dependent upon economic growth, and specifically from emerging markets....

Oman oil minister Mohammad bin Hamad al-Rumhy sharply criticised OPEC's production policy on Wednesday, saying it was creating volatility in the market without benefiting oil producers and that his country was suffering. In November, OPEC decided to keep its output unchanged despite sliding prices. Analysts believe the policy is being engineered by Saudi Arabia and other top Gulf producers to protect their market share against higher-cost suppliers outside OPEC, such as U.S. shale oil producers. Oman is a significant oil producer but it lacks the huge oil and financial reserves of its Gulf neighbours, and it is not an OPEC...

Stakeholders in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector have queried the relevance of Nigeria’s membership of the Organisation of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) and urged President Goodluck Jonathan to withdraw the country from the cartel. These stakeholders gathered at the weekend in Lagos at a symposium organised in honour of a former Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Ayodele Marinho, who celebrated his 80th birthday. They argued that OPEC as presently constituted serves only the interest of Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, which have contributed in the plummeting prices of crude oil because of a selfish...

Following Schlumberger's 9,000 lay-offs announced last week and Baker Hughes' 7,000 earlier this morning, Halliburton said today that it will execute workforce reductions similar to its peers during the first quarter. Halliburton COO Jeff Miller said: "We have already taken the initial steps on headcount internationally. As North America (NAM) activity falls, we will make adjustments in the US as well. We expect our headcount reductions to be in-line with our primary competitors. We will minimize discretionary spending. There is likely to be more restructuring in first quarter as we put initiatives in place to temper the impact of the...