Free Republic

Former Gov. Rick Perry on Tuesday gave his support to lifting a decades-old ban on crude exports, calling it a “major error” to prevent U.S. oil from being shipped overseas. Perry, a likely candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, said that if he won the White House, he would propel North America into the global energy business “in a big way.” “If energy is going to be used as a weapon, we need to have the largest arsenal,” Perry said at the discussion hosted by Bloomberg at the JW Marriott in downtown Houston on Tuesday. Most crude exports have...

Last month the White House submitted President Obama’s annual economic report to Congress. Nestled in the findings is a compelling case for lifting the country’s antiquated ban on natural gas exports. “An increase in U.S. exports of natural gas, and the resulting price changes, would have a number of mostly beneficial effects,” the report states, for domestic employment, geopolitical security, our energy industry and the environment. The report ticks off numerous benefits — “create jobs in the short run,” “lower natural gas prices around the world,” “promote the use of cleaner energy abroad” — that make clear the question is...

For an average price of $8,732 per acre with 20 percent production royalties, the West Virginia Department of Commerce with allow Norway-based Statoil to frack for oil and natural gas thousands of feet beneath the Ohio River. The finalized lease agreement for drilling in state-owned mineral tracts under the river is in addition to those filed by Noble Energy and Gastar Exploration, which would pay the state $4.9 million and $749,000, respectively, in addition to the 20 percent royalties. These deals are not yet official, however, as the companies remain in negotiations with state leaders. "We are still finalizing agreements...

North American chemical companies have seen their revenues slip with the plunging crude price, but they aren’t expected to abandon the billions worth of expansions they announced when profits were higher, a new report finds. Petrochemical companies have enjoyed deep discounts on the oil-based naptha and natural gas liquids they use to power their plants since the price of oil has collapsed in recent months, but chemicals they manufacture have also been selling for cheaper, eroding their margins, according to a new report by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services. Ethylene, a key building block for plastics, now fetches 35 percent...

Iran’s oil and gas sector holds plenty of promise but analysts say a deal between Tehran and global powers on nuclear issues this week is unlikely to spur either a flood of Iranian oil into the market or an investment bonanza by oil majors into the country. Iran and six world powers have been working to secure an agreement by March 24 to curb Tehran’s key nuclear activities for at least 10 years in exchange for gradual sanctions relief. “My guess is that on March 24th nothing will be done,” said Richard Nephew, who once led the Iran sanctions file...

Saudi Arabia’s refusal late last year to rein in oil production helped trigger the price crash that has hurt oil-producing countries and publicly listed energy companies alike. And now even the kingdom’s own oil company is feeling the pain. As a result, state-owned Saudi Aramco is looking for ways to cut costs everywhere, from pushing contractors for better deals on oil-well services to negotiating discounts on its phone and power bills, according to people familiar with the matter. The company—the world’s largest oil producer—is also considering slashing its future spending on production and exploration by as much as 25%, much...

The boom in U.S. oil production over the past decade led thousands of workers to prairie cities from Texas to North Dakota. Now, Saudi Arabia hopes those workers—many of them casualties of the ongoing downturn in crude prices—will consider the deserts of the Middle East instead. Saudi Arabia has a long history of recruiting skilled workers from the West to develop its vast oil reserves. The country, however, also possesses shale oil deposits, and observers say the current oil market provides an opportunity for the Saudis to begin developing those resources. “With the layoffs, it’s a great time to do...

<p>The latest row erupted this week as UN envoy Bernardino Leon, who is mediating between Libya's warring factions, warned the country was heading towards destruction unless a political deal is found.</p> <p>It also comes as the jihadist Islamic State group, which has made huge profits from illegal oil sales in Syria and Iraq where it has seized chunks of territory, has gained a foothold in Libya.</p>

OPEC and lower global oil prices delivered a one-two punch to the drillers in North Dakota and Texas who brought the U.S. one of the biggest booms in the history of the global oil industry. Now they are fighting back. Companies are leaning on new techniques and technology to get more oil out of every well they drill, and furiously cutting costs in an effort to keep U.S. oil competitive with much lower-cost oil flowing out of the Middle East, Russia and elsewhere. “Everybody gets a little more imaginative, because they need to,” says Hans-Christian Freitag, vice president of technology...

The billowing canopies went up on a bare patch of the Texas City refinery grounds during a repair cycle last fall. Some workers saw the tents as just a place to eat lunch. Brian Ambrose saw a nightmare repeating itself. He is one of the few remaining employees who encountered the horrors of 2005, when the BP unit on the same patch of earth erupted in explosions, leaving a charred mass of twisted metal, pulverized office trailers and the remains of 15 people. Others, including many of the roughly 180 injured, have retired or moved elsewhere. Ambrose, who was assigned...

After increasing for 15 consecutive weeks, crude oil storage at Cushing, Oklahoma, reached 54.4 million barrels on March 13, according to EIA's Weekly Petroleum Status Report. This volume is the highest on record, but not the highest percent of storage utilization, as working storage capacity at Cushing has also increased over time. Storage levels at Cushing are significant, because Cushing serves as the delivery point for the United States crude oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate. Sited in central Oklahoma, Cushing is home to both a network of crude oil pipelines and storage capacity. The 70.8 million barrels of storage capacity...

Q: Outside the U.S., where have companies drilled for shale resources? All over—big oil companies like Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. have invested in Canada, Europe, Russia, South America and Asia, hoping shale reserves there could be similarly productive to those in the U.S. Q: Which of those countries are producing? Outside the U.S., only Canada, China and Argentina have commercial production from shale, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says. Q: What happened everywhere else? In some places—like Sweden, Poland and Romania—companies didn’t find enough gas or oil to keep drilling. In others, like Germany...

Prospects for an uptick in business investment this year are facing a major drag: The collapse in oil prices is spurring significant cutbacks by the energy-production industry, which had been a standout in an otherwise lackluster U.S. economic expansion. Business capital spending rose 6% last year due to gains from a broad base of U.S. industries. The drag from energy this year could cut that growth rate in half in 2015, according to economists at Goldman Sachs. Moreover, equity analysts at the bank estimate capital spending globally by energy companies in the S&P 500 will fall 25%, leading to the...

...Brent for delivery in May fell 1.1% to $54.71 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in May traded at $45.64 a barrel, down 2% from last week’s close. Both contracts gained last week with U.S. crude snapping a four-week losing streak. On Sunday, Saudi Arabia’s influential oil minister Ali al-Naimi told a conference in Riyadh that there was no conspiracy behind the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ decision last fall to maintain its output target. He said the group could have lost market share if it...

Energy-sector deals have been a bright spot at a time when once-lucrative businesses, such as fixed-income trading and consumer lending, are flagging thanks to tighter rules, low interest rates and uneven economic growth, analysts said. Investment banks helped fuel the oil-and-gas exploration boom of the past decade by making loans valued at about $1 trillion to companies in the energy industry, most of which they sold to investors. The banks sold much of the debt to loan mutual funds, which grew rapidly from 2011 to 2013, but that demand dwindled as individual investors yanked $35 billion from the funds over...

After reaching record levels in 2013, United States imports of biomass-based diesel fuel (both biodiesel and renewable diesel) fell 36%, to 333 million gallons in 2014. Uncertainty surrounding future Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) targets and the absence of a late-year influx of volumes from Argentina were two main factors in this decline. The strongest drivers of the resurgence in U.S. biomass-based diesel demand since 2012 have been increasing RFS targets and the on-again, off-again biodiesel tax credit. Biodiesel and renewable diesel are valuable because they qualify for the two major renewable fuel programs in the United States: the RFS applied...

hina will lend Venezuela around $10 billion in coming months, half as part of a bilateral financing deal and the other half for the development of oil fields, a senior official at state oil company PDVSA said on Thursday. Fresh funds are a boon for financially squeezed Venezuela and will likely increase market confidence over the OPEC country's ability to meet major debt payments and arbitration awards. Venezuelan bonds rose on Thursday following the news. However, relief may be tempered as the loans appear largely earmarked and will only go so far in countering the steep tumble in oil prices...

As the global energy industry stares transfixed at a spectacular drop in U.S. rigs, Saudi Arabia is ramping up the number of machines drilling for oil and gas despite a sharp fall in the price of crude. Industry sources and analysts say the OPEC kingpin is looking beyond the halving of global oil prices since June 2014 to a time when crude could again be in short supply. Riyadh is therefore keen to preserve what is known as its spare capacity - the kingdom's unique ability to raise oil output quickly at any given moment. But to achieve that, Saudi...

Well done Costa Rica, well done. The Cental American country has achieved a major clean energy milestone, meeting 100 percent of its power demand with renewable energy for 75 straight days. “The year 2015 has been one of electricity totally friendly to the environment for Costa Rica,” the state-owned power supplier Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) said in a press release. The ICE says the country's zero-emission milestone was enabled thanks to heavy rainfalls at four hydroelectric power facilities in the first quarter of 2015. These downpours have meant that, for the months of January, February and so far March,...

Workers fired from shale fields in the United States after the slump in oil prices are reportedly being offered new jobs in Saudi Arabia. State-owned Saudi Aramco is posting new job ads online aiming to snap up experts in extracting oil from shale, Bloomberg reported. Thousands of US workers have been fired since November as oil prices plunged because of oversupplies, driven in part by an OPEC decision supported by Saudi Arabia, Bloomberg said. It quoted Tobias Read, CEO of recruiter Swift Worldwide Resources, as saying: “We’ve seen people who have historically been reticent to look at Saudi Arabia who...