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Offshore driller Hercules Offshore has laid off 30 percent of its workforce since October, company officials said on a conference call with analysts Thursday. The Houston-based company had about 2,200 employees, according to its most recent annual report. A company executive said Hercules has shed 672 workers in several rounds of layoffs in recent months. That would be just about double the number of employees Hercules said it would lay off by the end of December in a similar announcement last year. John Rynd, the company’s CEO, also said the company may consider cutting its contribution to workers’ 401K plans...

Three of the nine US oil refineries targeted by the largest oil worker refinery strike since 1980 have reported interruptions and unplanned repairs since the United Steelworkers Union (USW) workers went on strike earlier this month. Shell's 327,000 bpd refinery in Deer Park, Texas, is now operating normally after experiencing an upset at a fluid catalytic cracker on February 8. "Shell Deer Park continues to safely operate at planned production rates. While not formally at the negotiating table, the lines of communication remain open. Shell remains hopeful that both parties will reach a mutually satisfactory agreement," Shell said in a...

Oil equipment maker FMC Technologies has started to cut approximately 2,000 employees in a bid to trim costs as the oil field services industry faces a tough year after the collapse of crude prices, the company’s CEO told investors Wednesday. The Houston-based company, which manufactures subsea oil-field equipment and supplies hydraulic fracturing technology and other wellhead services in North America, has around 20,000 employees around the world. Most of the company’s 10-percent job cut will come from its operations in North America, FMC CEO John Gremp said in a quarterly earnings conference call. “We’re responding quickly and significantly to the...

Ectric cars are quick and quiet, with a range more than long enough for most commutes. If you want a car with extremely fast acceleration, the Tesla Model S is hard to beat. And, of course, electric vehicles avoid the pollution associated with conventional cars, including emissions of carbon dioxide from burning gasoline. Yet they account for a tiny fraction of automotive sales, mainly because the batteries that propel them are expensive and need to be recharged frequently. A better battery could change everything. But while countless breakthroughs have been announced over the last decade, time and again these advances...

Falling oil prices have some Texas lawmakers looking to reshape U.S. policy on crude oil in the mold of another iconic Texas product: Blue Bell Ice Cream. Blue Bell’s motto is “We eat all we can, and we sell the rest.” Texas legislators think that should also apply to oil by lifting the ban on crude oil exports — a policy that’s been in place since the oil crisis of the 1970s. A drop in the price of crude, from about $100 in mid-2014 to around $50 now, has threatened to halt the recent boom in U.S. oil production. The...

The U.S. Congress is nearing final approval of a bill that would green light the Keystone XL pipeline. But with the President set to veto the legislation when it reaches his desk, the ability of companies in Alberta to get their tar sands oil out of the country looks highly uncertain. With a southern route through Keystone XL potentially blocked, there have been alternative routes east and west. Enbridge has proposed the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would travel to British Columbia’s Pacific coast, but that has faced stiff environmental opposition from provincial residents and indigenous groups. TransCanada is also pushing...

Facing increased pressure from rail cutting into its business, while the Keystone XL pipeline remains under unending American review, TransCanada Corp. said it is planning to diversify into the oil-by-rail business within months, improving its customers’ ability to connect to its sprawling North American pipeline and storage network. “We are approaching 1.2 million barrels per day of [rail-] loading capacity — nobody has waited for Keystone XL pipeline to get built,” Russ Girling, president and CEO of the Calgary-based pipeline operator, said Wednesday following a speech to a business audience in Toronto. “Depending on our conversations [with customers], we will...

The United Steelworkers union is broadening its nationwide walkout to include two more refineries. Early Sunday, the union is planning to go on strike against two BP facilities in the Midwest, union spokeswoman Lynne Hancock confirmed. That will bring the total number of plants on strike to 11, after union members walked out of nine facilities, including five in the Houston area, a week ago. The latest work stoppages are scheduled to begin 12:01 a.m. Sunday at BP’s refineries in Toledo, Ohio and Whiting, Ind., Hancock said. BP issued a statement saying it is disappointed the union is launching a...

Another 8,000 oil jobs are about to evaporate, a major oil-tool supplier said Thursday, deepening the industry's wounds even as U.S. crude has regained some ground from its steep price slump. Weatherford International's 15 percent job cut brings the tally of layoffs by the world's four biggest oil field services companies to 25,000 in recent weeks - a bigger number in a shorter time than in oil downturns of the past. More are expected if oil remains cheap at $50 a barrel. Weatherford CEO Bernard Duroc-Danner promised investors that the company, incorporated in Ireland with its main U.S. offices in...

New information from the federal government suggests workers’ interest in unions continues to fall, with union membership reaching its lowest rate in 100 years. According to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today, the union membership rate fell to 11.1 percent, with just 14.6 million wage and salaried workers maintaining membership. In 2013, the union membership rate was 0.2 percentage points higher, at 11.3 percent. The rate of union membership has been on a steady decline over the past three decades. It grew slightly from 12.1 percent in 2007 to 12.4 percent in 2008. During President Obama’s first...

An interesting conclusion can be drawn from the numbers presented by the EIA this week. It appears that only three fourths of the increase in production of crude and natural gas liquids produced by the US industry last year were actually consumed. More than a fourth of this production had to be sent to storage because it could not be sold into the market. Here are the numbers: Crude Production up 1.1 MMB/D, NGL Production up 0.4 MMB/D, Inventory Build 0.4 MMB/D, or 27% of total production increase. The fact that all of the increased production did not find a...

Siemens AG on Friday said it would cut more than 2% of its workforce around the world as part of an aggressive plan to overhaul the business. The company will trim 7,800 jobs globally, of which 3,300 are expected in Germany, after the management and labor council met Thursday. The job cuts will be mainly among administrative and overhead employees, Siemens said. The staff reductions, which will be completed within two years, will cost Siemens in mid- to high-three-digit range in millions of euros, a person familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. The cost includes previously announced...

Fires at the site of an eastern Iowa freight train derailment are out but ethanol is leaking into the Mississippi River and the task turned to monitoring for environmental impact and offloading the fuel from derailed trains to empty cars. The cars went off the tracks at 11:20 a.m. Wednesday in a remote area about 10 miles north of Dubuque. Local authorities say three cars caught fire.....

...Some governments have moved already to shore up their revenues by raising gasoline taxes or cutting fuel subsidies. At the same time, falling oil costs have pumped up deflation fears across Europe and Japan, adding to the risk that consumers and businesses will hold back on spending and investment, dragging on growth. China has raised fuel-consumption taxes by 50% since November. Gasoline prices have soared in Indonesia as the authorities eliminated subsidies altogether. High taxes in Japan mean pump prices have fallen only 15% in the past six months, compared with a 40% decline in the U.S. Taxes also blunt...

A Houston-based company that makes piping and casing for oil and gas drilling has postponed plans to build a manufacturing plant in northeast Nebraska. Tejas Tubular Products President Maximo Tejeda told the Norfolk Daily News that he remains committed to building a mill next to Nucor Steel in Norfolk....

A tanker offloaded enough liquefied natural gas at Boston Harbor last week to heat 30,000 homes for a year, bolstering New England’s tight pipeline capacity just as a new wave of below-average temperatures threatens to strain energy supplies. But some advocates say this strategic slug of LNG during the coldest days of the winter can do more: It may help lower wholesale power prices from Connecticut to Maine, helping to hold down the cost of electricity for homeowners and businesses. That’s a debatable claim, but it highlights the intensifying dispute over whether New England power customers should spend billions of...

Oil prices continued their rally Tuesday as investors bet that a sharp decline in U.S. drilling activity will balance the oversupplied global market, and even as analysts cautioned that the rebound in prices may not prove to be sustainable. Front-month Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, rose 3.7% to be at $56.80 a barrel on London’s ICE futures exchange. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in March recently traded at $51.15 a barrel, up more than 3% from Monday’s settlement. Both the global oil benchmarks have gained more than 11% over the past three...

IA conducts a survey of gasoline prices each Monday, and yesterday's survey showed the U.S. average regular retail gasoline price increasing for the first time in 18 weeks. The steady decline in prices over the previous 17 weeks was the longest consecutive decrease in EIA's weekly survey since prices fell 14 cents per gallon over a 24-week period in 1995. The decline is the largest percentage decline since a 58% drop in gasoline prices over 15 weeks in late 2008. With oil prices at around $45 per barrel (bbl), petroleum refinery outages in the Midwest and Gulf Coast regions in...

In fact, the USW enjoys the right to pick which company will head up negotiations and specifically chose Shell this year for its perceived flexibility. Shell forged deals with the union in 2006, 2009 and 2012. Those contracts were considered successes, especially after a months-long walkout in 1980, a time people still talk about as a low point for disputes in the sector. This year, however, was different. John Abbott took over as Shell's refining chief in 2013 and Ben van Beurden became chief executive officer in 2014. This time, there were new faces on the negotiating team from Shell,...

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...