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Earlier this month, BP’s latest Statistical Review unintentionally reopened a debate into whether the US has regained the crown as the world’s top oil producer after decades of being out-gunned by Saudi Arabia and Russia. Ostensibly a straight-forward measure of which country tops the leaderboard on oil output, BP’s widely-read yardstick has the US eclipsing both Saudi Arabia and Russia for the first time last year since 1975. Fueled by booming shale oil, BP said, US oil output hit 11.64 million b/d last year, a narrow but decisive margin over Saudi Arabia’s 11.51 million b/d. The devil is in the...

The Greek tragedy is reaching its climax. The discussions between Greece and its European creditors broke down over the weekend, with the two sides still at an impasse. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras balked at deeper austerity cuts to the Greek economy, cuts that are a prerequisite for further help from Berlin and Brussels. As a result, Greece is approaching the precipice. With a massive debt payment due on June 30 to the IMF, Greece could default. The extent of the fallout is anybody’s guess, but Greece could see the value of its bonds plummet, putting its banks in crisis,...

For several months, oil market pundits (economists, analysts, company spokespeople, and government officials) have warned of a developing global crude oil surplus. Early this year, IEA economists even asserted world storage capacity might be exhausted. Today pundits still suggest we will confront a serious imbalance by year’s end. The market data do not reflect these views. Since Saint Patrick’s Day, prices have increased as much as thirty-seven percent from their recent lows. Some of the rise can be attributed to passive investor and speculator buying. However, speculation is not the whole story. The sharp contango (when a future market price...

U.S. operable atmospheric crude distillation (CDU) capacity increased by 0.2% in 2014, reaching 18.0 million barrels per calendar day (b/d) according to EIA's recently released annual Refinery Capacity Report (Figure 1). This was the second consecutive year of modest capacity growth following the 2.9% increase in 2012 that resulted from the restart of East Coast refineries that had closed in 2011. The capacities of secondary units that support heavy crude processing and production of ultra-low sulfur diesel and gasoline, including thermal cracking (coking), catalytic hydrocracking, and hydrotreating/desulfurization, also increased. The refinery capacity reported for the start of 2015 includes expansions...

Still grappling with market uncertainty, 51 percent of global hiring managers decreased their hiring efforts in the past three months, according to Rigzone’s latest global hiring survey. Additionally, 13 percent have completely frozen their recruitment plans. Since oil prices bottomed out in mid-March, the industry has seen slight increases in oil price per barrel, but not enough for oil and gas companies to feel comfortable enough to actively increase hiring plans in the near future, the survey revealed. In fact, 54 percent of global hiring managers said they believe job cuts are more likely in the next six months and...

MIAMI (AFP) - US climate change skeptics and deniers said Thursday that Pope Francis was wrong to urge action against global warming because continuing to burn cheap fossil fuels could actually help the poor. The reactions to Pope Francis' encyclical on climate change ranged from anger to polite disagreement, with US Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush saying he respects the Catholic leader but prefers to make decisions about the environment in the political realm. "Look, the climate is changing," Bush said at a campaign event in Iowa, according to CNN. "I believe there are technological solutions for just about everything....

Along with polar bears in ice floes drifting out to sea, a favorite image of the greenies is oil-soaked birds, flung before us every time there is an oil spill, even one so minor that the media expresses it in gallons, not barrels of oil, in order to make it seem large scale. The recent pipeline spill at Refugio State beach in California sounded much worse as 100,000 gallons than 2380 barrels. And pictures of oil soaked birds were ubiquitous.

The oil markets could be about to enter another round of soft prices. The OPEC decision on June 5 to leave its collective target unchanged was widely expected. As a result, oil prices barely flinched. But there are other reasons to think that oil prices could see a bit of a downturn in the coming weeks. First, OPEC revealed in its latest monthly oil report that it is still producing well above its stated 30 million barrel per day target. Saudi Arabia’s output inched up another 25,000 barrels per day in May from the month before in a further sign...

Candidate for Democratic nomination tells Republican presidential hopefuls to heed scientists on global warming.During her official launch speech last weekend, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tossed out a big clue about the direction she would take the country’s climate change policy. If elected, she vowed, she would seek to make the United States a “clean energy superpower” and pay for the transition in part with “additional fees and royalties from fossil fuel extraction.” Coming just days before Pope Francis’s leaked appeal to address climate change grabbed headlines around the globe, Clinton’s comments made little splash in the media. But that...

Denton’s 7-month-old ban on hydraulic fracturing fell early Wednesday morning in what city leaders dubbed a “strategic repeal.” Several City Council members said repealing the ban could help neutralize a pair of lawsuits against the city that were on the move again. Council member Greg Johnson called the option the least of three bad choices. Only Council member Keely Briggs voted against the ordinance to repeal, which passed 6-1. The Texas General Land Office and the Texas Oil and Gas Association amended their lawsuits against Denton's ban late Monday. They both cited House Bill 40 as the basis not only...

Artificial trans fat will have to disappear from the American diet, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA on Tuesday ruled that trans fat is not "generally recognized as safe" for use in human food. The department gave food manufacturers three years to remove the partially hydrogenated oils, or PHOs, from their products. The companies can petition the FDA for a special permit to use it, but no PHOs can be added to human food unless otherwise approved by the FDA. Eating a diet rich in trans fat is linked to higher body weight, heart disease and...

Alaska's crude oil production has declined from 1.8 million barrels per day (MMb/d) in 1991 to 0.5 MMb/d in 2014, and it is expected to continue declining through 2040. Almost 75% of Alaska's crude oil production from 1990 to 2012 was from the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk River fields in the central North Slope, which respectively produced 4.9 billion and 1.7 billion barrels of crude oil over this period. Crude oil production in Alaska is sensitive to the challenging environment—including variable ice conditions and limited time without ice coverage—as well as pipeline economics. However, recent conditional approval granted to Royal...

The world’s appetite for crude is making a comeback as economies improve and cheap oil draws out more buyers, the International Energy Agency says. In its monthly oil market report released Thursday, the IEA revised its estimate of daily global oil demand in the first half of the year by 400,000 barrels, as the United States and other developed nations reversed a “long declining, seemingly entrenched, trend to a rising one.” Worldwide, daily demand was 93.3 million barrels for the last six months, up 1.6 million from the same period last year. And the IEA believes demand could rise to...

Mexican state oil company Pemex announced five new shallow­water discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico in what it said was its biggest exploration success in five years. Emilio Lozoya, Pemex chief, made the announcement at the inauguration of a national oil and gas conference one month before Mexico’s historic first oil and gas tender. The July 15 auction, of 14 shallow­water exploration blocks in the same area as the new discoveries, is expected to signal the start of billions of dollars in private investment flowing into the sector. “The certain prospect of 200,000 extra barrels of production is very good...

It's a case of dueling press releases. But it deserves a minute of Minnesotans' time -- especially those Minnesotans who oppose the Sandpiper Pipeline and can't understand why their fellow residents keep rejecting their arguments. For those opponents, gaining this understanding is crucial. For indisputable evidence now has surfaced that the pipeline's backers are carrying the day -- evidence in the form of Friday's unanimous vote in favor of the pipeline by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. How can that be? How is it that even in famously liberal and environmentally sensitive Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes, the commission...

The most recent Drilling Productivity Report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration reveals that the phased impact of lower oil prices on U.S. tight oil production growth, is finally starting to show up and is expected to increase in magnitude over the next couple of months. The agency estimates crude oil production from the seven key regions in the Lower 48 states to have declined by around 44,000 barrels per day, or 0.8% month-on-month in May, and expects the decline rate to increase to around 91,000 barrels per day, or 1.7% month-on-month by July of this year. According to the...

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...

Liquor stores and restaurants across Craig are pulling Colorado craft beers off their shelves due to the beer companies’ financial support to WildEarth Guardians, the environmental group that put Colowyo Coal Mine at risk of being shut down. Stockmen’s Liquor pulled 12 brands of beer — including New Belgium Brewery — because they are listed as WildEarth Guardians supporters. “We pulled those beers because their support of WildEarth Guardians... who said their ultimate goal is to shut down coal mines,” said Lori Gillam, owner of Stockmen's. “Craig is a coal mine town.” WildEarth Guardians has a list of business supporters...

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,...