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Crude oil production in February from seven major US shale plays is expected to fall 116,000 b/d to 4.83 million b/d, according to the US Energy Information Administration’s latest Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The agency last month also projected a 116,000-b/d loss for January (OGJ Online, Dec. 7, 2015). The DPR focuses on the Bakken, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Marcellus, Niobrara, Permian, and Utica, which altogether accounted for 95% of US crude oil production increases and all US natural gas production increases during 2011-13. Production from the Eagle Ford is seen dropping 72,000 b/d during the month to 1.15 million b/d,...

President Barack Obama signaled in his final State of the Union address Tuesday night that fossil fuel companies could face higher charges when mining on federal lands. Obama said that he's going to push to change the way the federal government manages its oil and coal resources to better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and the planet.

The ink is barely dry on legislation to lift a 40-year-old ban on exporting U.S. crude and energy companies already are jockeying to ship American oil overseas. Two tankers filled with freely traded U.S. oil have pulled out of Texas ports in the past two weeks, with more shipments expected. The first American oil sales abroad are flowing to Europe but, in the longer term, Latin America and Asia could become natural markets, according to industry experts. U.S. oil sales to foreign buyers have been quick to start after President Barack Obama signed the bill that abolished the crude export...

For a guy who spends his time behind the wheel of a car going upwards of 200 miles per hour, you might wonder what else it takes to get NASCAR Driver Ryan Newman’s adrenaline pumping. Apparently it’s operating a massive Cat® mining machine. Newman, who races the No. 31 Caterpillar Chevrolet in the Sprint Cup Series, remotely operated a D11T Dozer from a trailer at the Phoenix International Raceway on November 13. The 230,000 pound machine (one of the largest in the world) was at the Caterpillar Tinaja Demonstration & Learning Center in Tucson, Arizona. While the concept seems like...

Crude oil has become so cheap it could speed the oil market to a recovery. U.S. crude plunged on Thursday to a 12-year low, an ominous milestone for Houston's oil hub, which already has shed thousands of jobs in the 19-month oil downturn. With crude now fetching less than $34 a barrel, about half the nation's scattered collection of 400,000 aging, nearly depleted wells may have to be shut in as their product becomes less valuable than their operating costs. Called stripper wells, these produce a negligible amount of oil individually but together account for about a tenth of U.S....

he US moved one step closer to becoming a global natural gas exporter on Monday as the 160,000 cu m Energy Atlantic LNG carrier began its final approach to Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass export facility, Platts trade flow software, cFlow showed Monday. While US LNG exports from Kenai, Alaska, began as early as 1969, Cheniere's newly minted export facility will be the first to send gas produced from the Lower-48 states to consumers across the globe. Much of the newly available US gas comes from hydraulic fracking that has lifted monthly production by more than 66% over the last decade...

Arch Coal filed for Chapter 11 protection on Monday, continuing an industry collapse that includes the bankruptcies of Patriot Coal, Walter Energy and Alpha Natural Resources. The White House must be cheering, because this is one Obama energy policy that seems to be working. As President Obama prepares to deliver his final State of the Union address Tuesday, we wonder if he'll take pride in the damage his policies have done to the coal industry. According to the National Mining Association, 40,000 coal jobs have been lost in the U.S. since 2008. The wealth destruction has been equally dramatic. Peabody...

The oil bust that has cost the United States roughly 70,000 energy jobs has become more severe than any downturn in 45 years, Morgan Stanley said Monday, as crude prices fell a sixth day. Crude prices tumbled below $32 a barrel on Monday, and over the past 19 months have plunged further and for a longer time than even the 1986 oil bust that deeply bruised the Texas economy. Morgan Stanley says the five major downturns since 1970 no longer can be a credible guide as the oil market enters "uncharted territory." "No floor in oil prices has been found...

U.S. shale oil production is expected to fall for a seventh month in a row in February, declining at about the same rate as the month before as drillers manage to eke out a few more barrels from each new well, U.S. data showed on Monday. Total output was set to decline by 116,000 bpd to 4.8 million bpd in February compared with January, a U.S. Energy Information Administration's (EIA) drilling productivity report said. Production was estimated to have fallen by about the same margin in January, despite some expectations that the decline rate would begin to quicken as companies...

Air Products and Chemicals Inc. formally signed on Technip to engineer and build its $400 million hydrogen plant in Baytown, the companies announced Friday. Pennsylvania-based Air Products is planning for the world-scale steam methane reformer plant in Texas to produce 125 million cubic feet a day of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, much of which will ship through its Gulf Coast pipeline that runs from the Houston Ship Channel to New Orleans. Paris-based Technip touted its work with Air Products as the longest and best hydrogen alliance in the world supporting the oil and gas industry. Hydrogen is used in the...

Malware has apparently been used for the first time to prompt a large-scale power blackout. An attack was tied to a Dec. 23 blackout affecting about 1.4 million Ukrainians living in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, reported Ukrainian news media outlet TSN. However, Slovakian information security firm ESET later confirmed that the reported case "was not an isolated incident," and that other energy companies in Ukraine were targeted by cybercriminals at the same time. ESET said the attackers have been using the BlackEnergy malware family. "Specifically, the BlackEnergy backdoor has been used to plant a KillDisk component onto the targeted computers that...

DC Energy Insights, a market provider of intelligence for the global technology industry, forecasts that the top 50 percent of oil and gas companies will double down on oilfield operation automation to double the productivity of those operations by 2020. The digital oilfield initiatives of the last decade spawned an investment in greater instrumentation and connectivity, especially for offshore, and this has proven beneficial in many ways. For example, it is now possible to obtain production values in a timely manner from offshore through instrumentation. However, limitations still exist for digital oilfield initiatives in terms of people and processes to...

Late last year a second major oil company was forced to abandon plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Alaska - and irresponsible, high-fiving anti-development activists, most of whom live thousands of miles away and will not be affected, could not be more thrilled. But for those who live close by, the ones who will be most affected, the news is devastating. Statoil recently announced that it's giving up 16 of its company-operated leases in the Chukchi Sea and abandoning its stake in 50 Chukchi leases operated by ConocoPhillips. The Norwegian company added that it would...

Moody's Investor Service hiked its measure of economy-wide financial stress to the highest level since 2010 on Tuesday and warned that more defaults are coming among oil and gas companies this year. The debt rating agency raised its oil and gas liquidity stress index, a gauge of how easily companies can access capital markets, from 19.3 percent in November to 19.6 percent in December. A higher reading indicates companies are having a harder time raising money. For the wider economy, Moody's bumped the liquidity stress index up to 6.8 percent in December, up from 6.5 percent in November. The hike...

Freeport-McMoRan Inc. co-founder James "Jim Bob" Moffett's last big gamble as head of the world's largest copper miner was a $1.2 billion wrong-way bet six miles beneath the Louisiana coastline. Bloomberg reports Moffett, a legendary wildcatter and geologist whose credits include the gigantic Grasberg copper deposit in Indonesia, is stepping down as chairman and director at Freeport as the minerals, oil and gas producer turns to cutbacks and cash preservation amid a deepening commodities meltdown. The 77-year-old Moffett in 2007 staked much of the company's future on an obscure cluster of gas-soaked rocks, hidden beneath coastal Louisiana oil fields, that...

As crude prices languish below $40 a barrel, American drillers are retreating from domestic oil fields even faster than in the tumultuous 1980s oil bust. U.S. oil companies are set to curb investments by 24 percent this year to $89.6 billion, meaning that from the beginning of last year to the end of this year, domestic drillers will have cut their annual capital budgets by 51 percent. That's more than the industry's 46 percent cut in the mid-1980s, according to Cowen & Co., which began its oil-company spending survey in 1982. But the oil field exodus will eventually pay off....

Natural gas spot prices in 2015 at the Henry Hub in Louisiana, a national benchmark, averaged $2.61 per million British thermal unit (MMBtu), the lowest annual average level since 1999. Daily prices fell below $2/MMBtu this year for the first time since 2012. Henry Hub spot prices began the year relatively low and fell throughout 2015, as production and storage inventories hit record levels and fourth-quarter temperatures were much warmer than normal. Natural gas prices at key regional trading hubs ended the year lower than their starting point. At northeastern locations, where natural gas transmission infrastructure is often constrained, prices...

Texas shale gas is setting sail for Europe. Cheniere Energy has begun liquefying natural gas at its Sabine Pass terminal on the Texas-Louisiana border. The gas will be loaded onto a ship scheduled to travel overseas later this month. That's welcome news for Texas and U.S. gas producers. A glut of shale gas has depressed prices in the domestic market. Slower growth in China and South Korea have clouded prospects for LNG shipments from Alaska to Asia. That leaves Europe, where demand for natural gas remains strong -- and prices are much higher. Getting the gas there is the challenge....

Domestic fuels have been heavily subsidized, but Riyadh has been under pressure to bring its spending under control as its budget deficit in 2015 ballooned to Riyal 367 billion due to lower revenue from crude exports. Jadwa estimated the cost of energy subsidies at USD 61 billion this year, of which diesel accounted for USD 23 billion and gasoline for USD 9.5 billion. The deficits represent a sharp turnaround from just a few years ago, before oil prices tumbled in mid-2014. Riyadh maintained high spending this year, and launched a military intervention against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen, by tapping into...

Armchair analysts have been predicting an oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Iran for a while now, and escalating tensions between the countries would seem to portend a major market disruption. But that war may never come. Saudi Arabia announced Monday that it will sever all commercial ties with Iran, a day after the kingdom said it would cut diplomatic relations with Iran. Protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran earlier Sunday, and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, predicted "divine vengeance" for the Saudi execution of a major Shiite cleric. Saudi Arabia is predominantly Sunni and home...