Free Republic

The is the first time when a study has shown a link between sea floor and the microbial processes in the upper ocean and provided a deep insight into how natural gas is interacting with microbes. While that amount is still a lot of oil, it is spread out in time over an entire year, so is much less devastating to marine life than oil from a huge spill. Scientists will continue to research the interactions between marine life and oil, and will look deeper into which types of phytoplankton benefit the most from this situation. "This is the beginning...

Oil prices surged by midday on Wednesday on comments from Russian officials hinting at possible coordination with OPEC on production cuts in an effort to arrest the decline in prices. The day didn’t start off on such a positive note. The EIA reported a massive increase in oil storage levels – a jump of 8.4 million barrels last week. Inventories are at their highest levels in at least 80 years. That pushed oil prices down in early trading on Wednesday.

Tue Jan 26, 2016 12:30pm EST Iraq says Saudi, Russia change tone on possible oil deal KUWAIT | By Rania El Gamal OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia and top non-OPEC producer Russia are showing signs of flexibility about agreeing to tackle an oil glut that has pushed prices to 12-year lows, the oil minister of Iraq said on Tuesday. "We have seen some flexibility from the brothers in Saudi and a change in tone from Russia," Adel Abdel Mahdi, whose country is the second-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said. His comments, made in Kuwait, boosted Brent...

Until Tuesday, Canada-based Trican Well Services was the tenth largest pressure pumping company in the US by frac horsepower. On Tuesday, the company announced a deal had been reached to sell their US frac fleet to Keane Group, a privately-held, U.S. based well completion services company. The deal marks Trican's exit from the US market. Under the agreement, Keane will acquire the majority of Trican’s U.S. assets, including equipment, key employees and its engineering capabilities. The deal has been expected, and we previously reported that it was coming, but the price had not been known until today's announcement. The total...

Texas has lost at least 60,000 upstream oil and gas jobs, plus as many as 250,000 supply chain and retail jobs indirectly, as a result of the oil crash, according to an analyst with one of the top industry trade groups in the state. Karr Ingham, a petroleum economist who compiles the semi-annual Texas Petro Index for the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, also doesn't expect those losses to stall in 2016. The TPI's estimate of 250,000 job losses in Texas is devised from a multiplier tying upstream oil and gas job cuts to jobs elsewhere in the economy. Ingham...

Funny how the market worked fine without government intervention to stop price 'gouging.' With crude-oil prices scraping along at about $30 a barrel--down from about $100 in January 2014--the impact of this free fall on the global economy is still to be determined, but there is no doubt about the short-term winners: consumers. The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline has fallen to $1.85 from $3.94 in April 2012. For the typical American who drives an average 15,000 miles a year, that means an annual windfall of roughly $1,200. One interesting aspect of this major correction is that...

Inventories will continue to rise, but the momentum is slowing. The following are some observations as to how we got here and how we’re gonna get out. 9 reasons why oil has taken so long to bottom: 1. OPEC increased production in 2015 to multiyear highs, principally in Saudi Arabia and Iraq where production between the two added 1.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) to inventories after the no cut stance was adopted. 2. Russian production increased in 2015 to post Soviet highs. 3. Long planned Gulf of Mexico production began coming on in late 2015. 4. An overhang of...

So what would happen if a modern-day president took the Eisenhower model and, ceased crude imports. The price shock to the energy markets could take domestic crude to $140 before it broke the back of our World Crude Oil Cartel.

Oil field services giant Halliburton shed another 4,000 jobs in the final three months of 2015, as the Houston-based company continued to aggressively cut costs amid the worst oil crash in decades. With the latest job cuts, Halliburton has reduced its global workforce by 25 percent, a total of about 22,000 employees since its peak in 2014. And more cuts could be on the way if a recovery in crude prices stalls, company executives said Monday morning. "2016 is shaping up to be one tough slog through the mud and the industry is going to have to take it a...

ALONG with bank runs and market crashes, oil shocks have rare power to set monsters loose. Starting with the Arab oil embargo of 1973, people have learnt that sudden surges in the price of oil cause economic havoc. Conversely, when the price slumps because of a glut, as in 1986, it has done the world a power of good. The rule of thumb is that a 10% fall in oil prices boosts growth by 0.1-0.5 percentage points. In the past 18 months the price has fallen by 75%, from $110 a barrel to below $27. Yet this time the benefits...

<p>Many smart people thought U.S. oil production would fall off a cliff along with the crash in crude prices.</p> <p>In reality, it hasn't even come close to killing American production. The U.S. pumped 9.35 million barrels of oil a day in October, according to the latest government statistics available. That's up from 9.13 million barrels in October 2014.</p>

Plunging oil prices are set to hit the electric car industry hard, but Tesla vehicles won't be the worst affected, says CEO Elon Musk. "[The] industry as a whole, I think, will definitely suffer from lower oil prices," Musk told CNN's Kristie Lu Stout on Monday. "It just makes economic sense."

Global energy demand will increase 25% between 2014 and 2040, driven by population growth and economic expansion, according to ExxonMobil Corp.'s 2016 Outlook for Energy. Most of this growth will occur in nations outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. At the same time, the carbon intensity of the global economy will decline by half because of energy efficiency gains and increased use of renewable energy sources and lower carbon fuels, such as natural gas. In 2040, oil will provide one third of the world's energy, remaining the No. 1 source of fuel, and natural gas will move into...

Iraq has been one of the key contributors to the uptick in OPEC oil production over the past year and a half. Despite the fact that the country’s crude oil output has continuously been plagued by security concerns and faltering payments to international oil companies from both the Kurdish regional government (KRG) and Baghdad and an ongoing row over oil export rights, it has still managed to ramp up production to record levels. Iraq’s consistent and record oil output last year is, by and large, contributable to the production in the south of the country. According to a January 16....

Environmental organizations that offered more than 150,000 comments calling on the U.S. Forest Service to reject an agreement to allow additional mining in the North Fork area said the response demonstrated strong public opposition. More like "stuffing the ballot box," said an industry spokesman who noted that the environmental opposition would undermine a bargain fashioned over five years of talks. The Forest Service proposes reinstating the North Fork coal-mining exception to the Colorado Roadless Rule. The exception would allow Arch Coal to extend the West Elk Mine near Somerset below the roadless area. The roadless exemption would allow construction of...

orth Dakota regulators granted a route permit Wednesday for what will be the largest crude oil pipeline out of the state's fruitful Bakken oil field, leaving Iowa as the only state left to approve the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline. Public Service Commission members Julie Fedorchak and Brian Kalk voted to grant the permit for Dakota Access LLC, a subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, which plans initially to ship up to 450,000 barrels of oil per day on the 1,168-mile pipeline from the Bakken and Three Forks regions in western North Dakota. "This is a massive infrastructure construction project,...

The chairman of Saudi Arabia's state oil giant said on Monday that plans for a possible initial public offering are not being driven by a need for cash amid a global slump in oil prices, but instead signal a desire for greater openness to outside investors. Speaking at an investment conference in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, Khalid al-Falih said the potential listing of the world's largest oil producer "is not for cash" but a "sign of the times" that the kingdom is open for business. "If we do it, the percentage will not be such that it's going to...

Venezuela's heavier oil fetches even less on international markets and is down to about $23 a barrel, near its break-even production point of about $17 to $18 a barrel. A default in 2016 "is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid," said Barclays economist Alejandro Arreaza in a report on Venezuela this week. If oil stays at $32 per barrel, Mr. Arreaza estimated that Venezuela will need to use 90% of its oil income this year just to meet its obligations, including sovereign debt and money owed to China. The cost of insuring Venezuelan sovereign debt has jumped in recent months, signaling...

"...Daniel Yergin, founder of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said it is impossible for OPEC to knock out the US shale industry though a war of attrition even if large numbers of frackers fall by the wayside over coming months. Mr Yergin said groups with deep pockets such as Blackstone and Carlyle will take over the infrastructure when the distressed assets are cheap enough, and bide their time until the oil cycle turns. "The management may change and the companies may change but the resources will still be there," he told the Daily Telegraph. "It takes $10bn and five to...

successfully navigated, global growth could be derailed." Of the warning signs, the decline in U.S. industrial production has one of the best track records. The output from mines, factories and utilities has always begun to decline before recession strikes. "Manufacturing tends to lead the economic cycle and it tends to be an indicator of the swings," said Thomas Costerg, senior economist at Standard Chartered. "Manufacturing is struggling." A strong U.S. dollar and weak economies internationally are taking a toll. But unlike past declines in industrial production, today's decline has been driven primarily by the collapse in the oil industry. The...