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HOUSTON — Baker Hughes said Tuesday it will lay off 7,000 mostly in the first quarter of 2015, amid a crude oil price slump and drilling slowdown it expects to worsen in the next quarter. The announcement came shortly after the oil service company reported that its net income for the three months ending Dec. 30 rose to a record high of $663 million, or $1.52 a share. After adjustments to exclude deconsolidation of a joint venture, the company reported an earnings per-share of $1.44. In the same period of 2013, Baker Hughes reported $248 million in profit. The layoffs...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Another sharp fall in crude oil prices triggered a broad-based selloff in U.S. stocks on Tuesday, overshadowing earlier positive momentum from a four-day European rally. Crude reversed significant gains on Friday after Iraq reported record levels of oil output and the International Monetary Fund cut its two-year forecast for the global economy. West Texas Intermediate was down 3.8% to $46.83 a barrel by midday. Commodity futures lost Friday's temporary stability as Iraq's oil minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said the country was producing 4 million barrels of crude a day and plans to boost exports. Separately, Iran's...

Following Schlumberger's 9,000 lay-offs announced last week and Baker Hughes' 7,000 earlier this morning, Halliburton said today that it will execute workforce reductions similar to its peers during the first quarter. Halliburton COO Jeff Miller said: "We have already taken the initial steps on headcount internationally. As North America (NAM) activity falls, we will make adjustments in the US as well. We expect our headcount reductions to be in-line with our primary competitors. We will minimize discretionary spending. There is likely to be more restructuring in first quarter as we put initiatives in place to temper the impact of the...

Expert says western yellow-billed cuckoo may be more prevalent than first thought. Paonia ornithologist Jason Beason likes to say that there are a lot of cuckoos out there. The line is good for laughs at presentations like the talks he gave in the Roaring Fork Valley last week, and it accurately reflects the fact that dozens of species of cuckoos populate the Earth in both the Old and New Worlds. These include birds people might not immediately think of as being cuckoos, such as the greater roadrunner in the southwestern United States. But in the case of the cuckoo of...

Full Title: Samir Kamal, Libya’s governor for oil cartel Opec for the past two years, has disappeared in Tripoli. The senior manager at the country’s Ministry of Oil has not been seen since leaving his place of work on Thursday afternoon, numerous media reports say. Reports in Libya suggest he was abducted and had resisted attempts by some individuals to profit from his position as a representative of the major North African producer at Opec. The Vienna-headquartered 12-member organisation has so far resisted pressure to slash output amid continued oil price weakness. Earlier this month Kalam told Reuters: "Something should...

...businesses and workers are bracing for the worst. A Mexican restaurant has started a Sunday brunch to expand its revenues beyond dinner. A Mercedes dealer, anticipating reduced demand, is prepared to emphasize repairs and sales of used cars. And some well-off oil company managers are cutting back at home, rethinking their vacation plans and cutting the hours of their housemaids and gardeners. Dexter Allred, the general manager of a local oil field service company, began farming alfalfa hay on the side some years ago in the event that oil prices declined and work dried up. He was taking a cue...

Baker Hughes said Tuesday it will lay off 7,000 mostly in the first quarter of 2015, amid a crude oil price slump and drilling slowdown it expects to worsen in the next quarter. The announcement came shortly after the oil service company reported that its net income for the three months ending December 30 rose to an adjusted $629 million, or an adjusted earnings per share of $1.44 in 2014. In the same period of 2013, Baker Hughes reported $248 million in profit. The company said it expects to book a one-time charge in the next period in the range...

Exxon Mobil Corp. said Monday it has begun producing from the third and final field of its Russian Sakhalin-1 project. The Sakhalin-1 project is a joint venture with several Russian oil and gas companies and is operated by Exxon Neftegas Ltd. The third field, Arkutun-Dagi, is expected to reach a peak production of 90,000 barrels per day, Exxon Mobil said in its announcement. Exxon Neftegas owns a 30 percent interest in the field and Japan’s Sakhalin Oil and Gas Development Co. Ltd. holds another 30 percent interest. India’s ONGC Videsh Ltd. also holds a 20 percent interest and several affiliates...

A Canadian company that expanded into South Texas in 2012 with a pioneering waterless technique to fracture shale rock has filed for bankruptcy protection as it seeks to reorganize. The company, GasFrac Energy Services Inc. of Calgary, Alberta, may be the first firm to seek bankruptcy protection among those that established a South Texas presence as drilling in the Eagle Ford Shale boomed. GasFrac filed Chapter 15 bankruptcy in Canada on Thursday and later that day in federal bankruptcy court in San Antonio. A U.S. Chapter 15 case is ancillary to a primary filing in the debtor’s home country. GasFrac...

The fate of the oil that flows through the Keystone XL pipeline and the source of the steel used to make it are set to be decided this week in the U.S. Senate. The chamber is expected to vote on as many as three amendments to GOP-backed legislation to authorize the TransCanada Corp. pipeline on Tuesday, with more than four dozen other possibilities on the horizon. Few are without controversy, and many are meant to send a message or put senators in a difficult spot, casting votes on such issues as protectionism, oil spills and climate change. The first three...

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced major new regulations on the emissions of methane into the air from oil and gas production. It calls methane a “potent” pollutant and its new rules would require a 45 percent reduction by 2025 from 2012 levels. Most Americans support these new rules, according to polling from environmental groups. This isn’t surprising. Methane sounds like a dirty and dangerous pollutant and even deadly if leaked into water or the air. However, methane is just another term for the main component of natural gas. Drillers have a powerful motive to stop leakage on...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A potentially endangered species of bat could become a major obstacle to the proposed Sandpiper oil pipeline in northern Minnesota. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering whether to declare the northern long-eared bat an endangered species because the spread of the white-nosed syndrome disease has reduced its population. In that case, Enbridge could be forced to postpone its pipeline project or chose a different route. The current proposal would carry crude from the North Dakota oilfields to Superior, Wisconsin and would run through the bats' habitat. Enbridge has already taken steps to avoid...

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. has harvested the first barrels of petroleum at its deep-water Lucius project in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the biggest startups expected in the U.S. offshore region this year. The Woodlands-based oil explorer’s massive Lucius production facility includes a 23,000-ton truss spar, which is a 110-foot-diameter floating cylindrical hull that can handle up to 80,000 barrels of oil and 450 million cubic feet of natural gas a day. The Lucius field, named after an heir to the Roman throne, houses 300 million barrels of oil equivalent about 230 miles offshore in 7,200 feet of water. The...

Canada-based Enbridge Inc. (NYSE: ENB) and Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners LP (NYSE: EPD) celebrated Jan. 16 the beginning of delivery of Canadian tar sands crude oil to the Houston area through a new pipeline system. While the Keystone XL pipeline remains mired in political debate, Enbridge and Enterprise on Dec. 21 delivered the first high-volume Canadian crude to Freeport, Texas through the newly completed Seaway Pipeline system twin loop and the new Flanagan South pipeline. The two pipeline systems connect in Cushing, Oklahoma, with the new Seaway loop delivering up to 450,000 barrels of oil a day of Canadian crude...

(Updates with output from Shabwa field, Belhaf gas facility stopping) Jan 19 (Reuters) - Oil companies in Yemen's Hadramout and Shabwa provinces, including the main gas export facility at Belhaf, have suspended operations amid protests over the seizure of a presidential aide by Shi'ite fighters who control the capital Sanaa, local officials said on Monday. The Shi'ite Houthis seized President Abd-Rabbu Mansur Hadi's chief of staff, Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, a native of the southern Shabwa province, on Saturday amid a dispute over a proposed new constitution that threatens to bring down the government. "Several oil firms with small production...

For China's shipyards, the oil rig market that was supposed to be a blessing is in danger of becoming a curse. As crude prices slide, oil producers are slashing new project spending. With a near 40 percent slice of a global market worth tens of billions of dollars, Chinese rig builders that offered juicy financing terms and discounts to leapfrog Asian rivals in recent years are now the most exposed to a slowdown. Diversifying to pull out of a downturn in traditional shipbuilding, China's state and privately owned yards have lured orders away from regional peers, building scores of rigs...

Pennsylvania's most prolific shale gas driller dialed back 2015 spending plans Thursday because of low natural gas prices, following a general belt-tightening among energy companies across the country. Fort Worth-based Range Resources Corp., which has a regional headquarters in Cecil, dropped its capital expenditure plan by a third to $870 million from $1.3 billion. That initial figure was 18 percent lower than its 2014 plan. The company plans to spend nearly all that money in developing Marcellus shale wells and still plans to increase gas production by 20 percent over this year. “The time and effort that Range spent in...

Despite an oversupply of crude oil that has halved trading prices and led the U.S. to consider lifting a 40-year-ban on crude exports, completing the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline remains a priority, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said Friday in Beaumont. “We know that as global demand goes up, prices will go up,” Cornyn, R-Texas, said. “I think we ought to take advantage of the opportunity we’ve been given because great innovative drilling techniques devised in the United States and the great natural resources we have … help grow our economy and help keep America safe.” Cornyn delivered...

BNSF Railway more than tripled the number of trains it moved through Nebraska with a million gallons of oil or more aboard late last year and has changed its route to bypass Lincoln, at least for some trains. Reports filed with the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency show that late last year BNSF expanded the number of oil trains it was required to report from three per week in July to a range of seven to 14 per week. Railroads must report trains that carry at least a million gallons of oil -- about 35 tank cars -- from the Bakken...

More than 40,000 upstream oil and gas jobs in Texas could be lost as energy sector activity here continues to slow, said Karr Ingham, the economist who compiles the monthly Texas Petro Index tracking the industry’s economic indicators. The latest data point that spells trouble for the industry: data released Friday indicating that that the number of rigs operating in the U.S. was down 74 this week, the rig count’s biggest one-week decline in more than six years. “We’re now at the point where there’s likely to be some damage inflicted on the Texas economy,” Ingham said. “I’d sure be...