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While many HR professionals have seen the oil and gas industry’s downturn as an opportunity to acquire some highly-skilled workers, the industry is still challenged with a shortage of STEM-capable people in the pipeline. And once the industry is back on the uptick, oil and gas companies will have to rehire – probably rather quickly – to remain competitive. So HR has some important decisions ahead. And while one can never determine how long an individual will stay with a company, Chris Melillo, managing partner and energy practice leader for Kaye/Bassman International Corp., recently told Rigzone it was a very...

In the largest expansion of national marine sanctuaries in California in 23 years, the Obama administration on Tuesday more than doubled the size of two Northern California marine sanctuaries, extending them by 50 miles up the rugged Sonoma and Mendocino coasts. Under the dramatic move by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the boundaries of the Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank national marine sanctuaries expand from Bodega Bay to Point Arena, permanently banning offshore oil drilling along that stretch of coast. "These waters represent an extraordinary marine ecosystem, one of the richest on our planet," said Maria Brown,...

A Santa Barbara County official has rejected a proposal by Exxon Mobil to send a fleet of 6,720-gallon trucks on as many as 192 daily trips on U.S. 101 while the pipeline the company normally uses is out of commission after last month's oil spill. Dianne Black, assistant director of planning and development for Santa Barbara County, shot down the plan to use as many as eight trucks per hour, 24 hours a day, to transport oil from an Exxon facility near El Capitan State Beach to refineries as far away as San Luis Obispo County. Crude oil typically moves...

Yesterday's Drilling Productivity Report from the EIA better defines the inflection point many in the industry have been waiting for since late-last year. US tight oil production is rolling over, and EIA sees the decline accelerating. We believe the relationship between the US rig count and US oil production is the most critical in O&G today, for it is the cornerstone of most global trough/recovery scenarios. By next month, all of the 2015 production gains will be given up per the EIA, and, at this pace, all of 2014's gains (some 1.1mmbpd) could be wiped away by mid-2016. Of course,...

The federal forecast of U.S. shale production is sinking again for the third month in a row, but the decline is still just a thin layer off the top. Daily oil production at the nation’s six biggest shale plays is set to slip by 91,000 barrels from June to July, the Energy Information Administration says. That’s roughly 2 percent of the 5.48 million U.S. barrels anticipated next month, hardly the kind of decline oil-industry stakeholders had expected for after drillers sidelined nearly 1,000 oil-drilling rigs in the last six and a half months. “It’s a pretty resilient industry,” said Bill...

Five of the world’s seven richest countries have increased their coal use in the last five years despite demanding that poor countries slash their carbon emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change, new research shows. Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and France together burned 16% more coal in 2013 than 2009 and are planning to further increase construction of coal-fired power stations. Only the US and Canada of the G7 countries meeting on Monday in Berlin have reduced coal consumption since the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009. The US has reduced its coal consumption by 8% largely because of fracking for shale...

In an effort to better present crude oil storage capacity and use across the United States, EIA has prepared new tables as part of the semiannual Working and Net Available Shell Storage Capacity Report. The new series show crude oil stocks held at refineries crude oil in tanks and underground storage in each Petroleum Administration for Defense District (PADD). Previously, this information was only available at the national level. Crude oil stocks in tanks and underground storage are used to calculate storage capacity utilization rates and to derive the quantity of crude oil held in pipelines and in transit by...

Te Saudi Arabian government delegation appreciate and fully support the decision of the Indonesian government to become an OPEC member again, because Indonesia is one of the founders of OPEC," Indonesian Energy Minister Sudirman Said said in the statement. Saudi Arabia is Indonesia's top crude supplier. Naimi will also push for Saudi state oil firm Saudi Aramco to invest in Indonesia's downstream sector, Said said.

Although data_opacity makes objective_analysis difficult, market observers reported in April that China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest oil_importer. This statistical inflection point needs context to understand global consumption trends. While oil bulls are anxious about China’s reduced crude growth appetite, fundamental shifts in Chinese currency and domestic consumption strategies point to long-term growth in Chinese hydrocarbon consumption generally. Keith Johnson wrote in Foreign Policy on May 11, 2015, “… China’s continued and, indeed, deepening reliance on volatile regions for the world for energy supplies, especially the Middle East, points to continued security vulnerabilities for Beijing for...

‘Flexibility” is the advertised hallmark of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan, which by 2030 would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants by 30% from 2005 levels. The central feature of the plan is a forced shift away from inexpensive coal-fired power. Not to worry, says EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy: “With EPA’s flexible proposal, states choose the ways we cut carbon pollution, so we can still have affordable, reliable power to grow our economy.” Under the plan, the EPA will set a carbon-dioxide-emissions target for every state, and give each state roughly a year to develop and...

In what is likely the final action in a lengthy environmental lawsuit against ConocoPhillips’ CD-5 project on the North Slope, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason denied the plaintiff’s final motion for a summary judgment to invalidate the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Record of Decision and permits for the project. The suit was filed in 2013 by several residents of Nuiqsut, a nearby Inupiat village. The project itself, a satellite of the producing Alpine oil field near the Colville River, has been under construction since 2013 and is nearing completion. Although Gleason ruled in 2014 that the Corps did...

Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp. said June 1 it received authorization to export liquefied natural gas to non-free trade agreement countries at its Alaska LNG terminal. The proposed project received conditional authorization from the U.S. Department of Energy to export up to 20 million metric tons per year of LNG for 30 years. The terminal previously received authorization to export to countries with U.S. trade agreements. “As with any large scale LNG project, access to as many markets as possible will improve the commercial viability of the proposed project,” Steve Butt, Alaska LNG senior project manager, said in a statement....

Indianapolis Power & Light Co. (IPL) plans to construct a $25 million energy-storage facility in central Indiana. Department of Metropolitan Development officials said IPL is looking at two spots for the battery energy storage system (BESS): one at the Harding Street Station in Marion County, Indiana; and the other is at a new $600 million Eagle Valley plant under construction in Morgan County. Officials estimate the project at the Harding Street plant to cost $24.5 million for new equipment and $500,000 for real estate. However, the project would not be eligible for a real estate tax abatement. IPL is seeking...

There's no denying that natural gas is revolutionizing our energy economy, but few believed it could deal such a swift death blow to coal, the commodity that brought us into the Industrial Revolution and has been our backbone ever since. But the signs are irrefutable. Here's what you need to know. A historic battle Coal and natural gas have been going at it for a while. Traditionally, these were actually complementary energy sources. As a cheaper fuel that was more difficult to manage, coal-fired generation plants were the "slow burners" that kept our energy capacity steady throughout the day. Relatively...

Wall Street’s generous supply of funds to U.S. oil drillers helped create the American energy boom. Now that same access to easy money is keeping them going, despite oil prices that are languishing around $60 a barrel. The flow of money into oil has allowed U.S. companies to avoid liquidity problems and kept American crude production from falling sharply. Even though more than half of the rigs that were drilling new wells in September have been banished to storage yards, in mid-May nearly 9.6 million barrels of oil a day were pumped across the country, the highest level since 1970,...

Drillers found another 13 oil rigs to set aside this week, as the industry continued to tighten its belt amid low prices. The number of U.S. rigs chasing oil fell to a total of 646, while gas rigs rose by three to 225. Combined, the total Baker Hughes rig count fell by 10 to 875. Miscellaneous rigs were unchanged at four. The rig count, considered a proxy for industry activity, has fallen sharply since oil prices collapsed last summer. Exploration and production companies have slashed budgets and idled rigs as drilling for now-cheaper crude has become less profitable. Overall, Baker...

This Week in Petroleum has previously examined crude oil supply patterns on the West Coast, noting the increase in unaccounted-for supply, and then linking the increase to movements of crude by railroad. EIA’s recently launched crude-by-rail data enable a more detailed analysis of emerging crude oil supply patterns on the West Coast. The data indicate that most crude-by-rail deliveries into PADD 5 are destined for refineries in Washington state, and that despite recent delays in crude-by-rail projects in California, refineries in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas are not entirely without access to domestic crude oil from other regions....

Industrial sector energy consumption is expected to grow faster than all other sectors, according to EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2015. A large portion of both consumption and anticipated growth is in the bulk chemicals industry, which is able to take advantage of increased domestic supply of natural gas, hydrocarbon gas liquids (HGL), and petrochemical feedstocks. While some energy is used in the bulk chemical manufacturing process for heat and power, most energy in that industry is used as feedstocks, or raw materials used in the manufacture of chemicals. Most bulk chemicals are intermediate products used to produce final products such...

Houston is oil and gas country, but hydroelectric power is coming to the region through Lake Livingston. The East Texas Electric Cooperative, or ETEC, broke ground Wednesday on the new 24-megawatt hydroelectric plant will power about 12,000 eastern Texas homes and generate about $1 million annually for the city of Houston for the right to use city facilities at the lake. The power plant at the existing Lake Livingston dam is scheduled for completion in 2018. The plant is rarity for Texas as a state with limited water resources and with hydroelectric plants already built decades ago along many of...

Plains All American Pipeline, the company which owns the pipeline at the centre of an oil spill off the coast of California, on Monday downgraded the amount of oil it says spilled in a worst-case scenario. The company said the estimate of the worst-case volume of oil released was up to 101,000 gallons – about 4,200 gallons less than previously believed. Plains All American is still cleaning up the spill along the Santa Barbara County coastline and recovering oil from the pipeline, so the calculations are not final.