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Shell had been working with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) on how to ship lightly processed condensate overseas without violating a decades-old crude export ban, the company told Reuters. The BIS regulates export controls. The approval enables Shell to move ahead with exports of condensate that qualifies as an exportable refined product as defined by BIS guidance issued on Dec. 30, the company said. However, U.S. crude oil prices have fallen by more than half since June to less than $50 a barrel and Shell said it would export processed condensate when it was...

...The two measures are clearest signs yet that the administration is ready to allow more of the booming U.S. shale oil production to be sold overseas,.... Output of very light oil has been especially strong, leading to a glut that threatens to overwhelm domestic demand. The constraints helped fuel bumper profits for refiners such as Valero Energy Corp and PBF Energy Inc, but angered drillers such as Hess Corp that say they were selling at a discount.... The steps on Tuesday were "certainly not designed to add or detract from what can be exported. We are trying to make the...

(Reuters) - The main U.S. export authority is telling some oil companies that they should consider exporting a lightly processed form of crude oil called condensate without formal permission, according to people familiar with the discussions. In conversations that may help clear the way for more overseas sales of U.S. shale oil, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has told companies seeking clarification on the legal status of so-called "processed condensate" that self-classification – whereby companies export their product without any formal authorization - could be a way forward, the people told Reuters. An official familiar with...

Condensate is coming, and a whole lot of it too, U.S. Energy Information Administration Director Michael Schaal told attendees at a Platts, McGraw Hill Financial pipeline conference today. A comprehensive definition about what exactly condensate is, however, might have to wait. By one broad classification, lease condensate is a very light type of oil separated at field facilities from natural gas. Under that definition, lease condensate production has been growing rapidly in the U.S. as more oil is drawn from shale. In 2012, the EIA estimated that the U.S. pumped 274 million barrels of lease condensate from the ground, compared...

With an $860 million deal announced this week, Buckeye Partners is betting on condensate. Condensate, a type of light crude oil, has been flowing in increasing quantities from the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas as technological advances boost production there. And with more condensate coming from the region — as well as the possibility that lightly refined condensate may be exempt from a U.S. ban on most crude oil exports — many midstream companies are looking at potential profit in getting the light oil from the South Texas wells to market. From 2009 to 2012, annual U.S. production of...

The Obama administration has cleared the way for two energy companies to sell an ultralight variety of oil overseas after minimally processing it, a decision that tests the limits of a long-standing ban on exporting U.S. crude. The move, which came in private classification orders issued by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, effectively confirms that hydrocarbon known as condensate qualifies as a petroleum product once it has been processed in a distillation tower, and therefore is not barred by the 39-year-old ban on crude exports. Unlike unprocessed crude, companies can freely sell gasoline, diesel and other petroleum...

A simple tweak by the Commerce Department would allow the U.S. to begin selling ultralight fossil fuels overseas, a significant first step in easing the 39-year-old ban on crude exports, a new report says. The analysis released by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, focuses on condensate, a natural gas liquid made up of light fuels such as propane and butane. The fuels generally flow as liquids at normal temperatures even if they’re gas underground. Though it is chemically different than crude, condensate is swept under the oil export ban — at least as long as the light hydrocarbon is coming out...

In a state-versus-oil company battle with major implications for the development of Alaska's untapped North Slope gas, a state judge this week issued a ruling in favor of oil companies. State Superior Court Judge Sharon Gleason said the state violated Exxon Mobil and its partners' constitutional right to due process last year when it terminated their Point Thomson unit -- potentially the second-most lucrative collection of gas leases on the Slope. The oil and gas field sat undeveloped for decades though the state and Exxon had signed an agreement creating the Point Thomson unit in 1977. The goal of creating...

An exotic quantum state that had previously appeared only under conditions of astonishing cold has made its room-temperature debut, reports an international team of scientists. In related experiments, other researchers have produced a similar state in different, still-chilly materials but claim that their experiments will lead to room-temperature versions as well. The new findings, unveiled in independent reports in the Sept. 28 Nature, reveal a bizarre new branch of an already exotic family of quantum states of matter known as Bose-Einstein condensates. Previously produced Bose-Einstein condensates, which form only at temperatures near absolute zero, include a superfluid of liquid helium...

Ultracold Atoms Form Long-Lasting Waves At sufficiently cold temperatures, the atoms in a gas can form what is known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), losing their individual identities and merging into a single quantum state. The phenomenon has fascinated physicists ever since gaseous BECs were created in the laboratory in 1995 (although the possiblity was first postulated some 70 years earlier), and a flurry of recent research has uncovered all kinds of remarkable condensate properties. Now researchers writing in the journal Nature have yet another discovery to add to that list. According to the report, BEC atoms trapped in a...