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Undaunted by the long battle over Keystone XL and current low oil prices, TransCanada Corp. is planning to build another border-crossing pipeline that would ferry North Dakota crude to refineries in Eastern Canada. TransCanada executives confirmed Friday they have signed contracts with shippers for enough capacity on the proposed 285-mile Upland pipeline to go forward with the project. It would move as many as 70,000 barrels a day of oil away from North Dakota’s Williston Basin, giving producers another alternative to shipping that crude by rail. “There is no question that production is up in North America, across the board,”...

I had been wanting to go to Williston, North Dakota for quite a while. Having heard so much about the boom going on there, I couldn’t wait to see it for myself – up close and personal! The biggest obstacle in planning the trip however was finding a place to stay. Like so many, I had heard the stories of $2,000 and $3,000 a month rent – if you could find a place to rent at all! So, I turned to Facebook... I posted on Facebook that I was interested in coming to Williston to visit some rigs and sell...

The oil price plunge and global economic uncertainty have forced engineering giant Rolls-Royce to cut its profit forecasts again. Last year, the company issued two profit warnings. The company reported Friday that its underlying revenue fell in 2014 for the first time in a decade, as customers, oil and gas companies, cut back on spending amid the price plunge. The world's second-largest aero-engine company pledged to take concrete actions to restore credibility as it reported an 8% fall in underlying pre-tax profits for 2014- the first such decline in over a decade. The company said that the plunge in oil...

Seadrill disclosed this morning that two of its three-year contracts for ultra-deepwater rigs with Petrobras in Brazil have failed. Seadrill had booked $1.1bn into its backlog associated with the contracts last quarter. That backlog, and the six rig years of work it represents, is now being written off as the contracts are no longer expected to be honored as signed. While there has been a sprinkling of offshore rig contract terminations here and there since oil prices started falling, most have been for contracts well underway and most have been related to a single operator, Statoil, that has been right-sizing...

"This is the really crappy part of the job, and this is what I hate about this industry frankly," the chief executive of oilfield services company Baker Hughes complained as he announced it would lay off 7,000 employees.... More than 100,000 layoffs have been announced across the industry worldwide since prices began to slide last summer, according to a tally kept by Bloomberg.... Oil and gas production is an exceptionally capital-intensive industry. But the sector's most important and scarce resource is its workforce. The oil industry's popular image may be a roughneck in soiled overalls drinking in a strip joint,...

About half the surplus crude accumulating in tanks across the United States is flowing into Cushing. If the build-up continues at the same rate, some industry officials and sources said, the tanks could reach maximum capacity by early April.... Traders have been scrambling to secure space at Cushing so they can store oil purchased at current low prices and sell it in a year at a profit exceeding $11 a barrel because the oil market has been in a structure known as contango. In January, crude oil arriving by pipeline and rail into Cushing, the delivery point of the U.S....

Norway's BW Offshore confirmed Thursday that of the 74 persons onboard the Cidade de Sao Mateus FPSO, there have been five fatalities, with four crew still missing. The remaining crew are all accounted for and receiving medical care where needed, with two in critical condition and for safety reasons, have all been taken off the unit. The next of kin have been informed and all personnel are being attended to by a special support team established by BW Offshore Brazil. Search and rescue operations continued into the night following the explosion onboard the Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit...

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.....