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Five years ago this week, a blowout of BPÂ’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig 40 miles from the Gulf Coast tragically claimed eleven lives and spilled 3 million barrels of oil from the damaged wellhead into the Gulf. ItÂ’s hard to forget the video images of thick oil gushing, day after day, into the regionÂ’s waters. It was a horrific accident that caused substantial damage to the ecology and commerce of the region. Gulf-area wildlife, portions of the shoreline, tourism, fishers and shrimpers, and energy-sector workers suffered large losses in the aftermath of the spill. BP has paid close to $27...

Low crude prices will trigger consolidation in the oil industry but a new bull market might arrive much sooner than expected given the huge scale of capital and workforce withdrawal in the sector, a former boss of oil major BP said. "The actions the industry is taking to withdraw capital are laying the seeds for the next bull market," Tony Hayward told the FT Commodities Summit. "The peak of U.S. shale supply has arrived – earlier than anticipated ... The supply chain in the U.S. has been decimated ... It will take several years to take activity back," Hayward said....

U.S. crude oil production fell at least 135,000 barrels of oil per day in January 2015 compared to December 2014 according to the EIA (Figure 1). Bakken Shale production fell the most of any play or jurisdiction losing 37,000 barrels per day in North Dakota and 4,000 barrels per day in Montana for a total of 41,000 barrels of oil per day (Figure 2). Production in California, the offshore Gulf of Mexico, Alaska and Wyoming also declined significantly. Figure 3 shows Bakken production based on DrillingInfo data. The 42,000 barrels of oil per day drop in January production is completely...

Has billionaire oil man Harold Hamm ever been tempted to take the U.S. shale revolution abroad and expand his oil empire from North Dakota to the rest of the world? “I have not,” Hamm told a gathering of energy executives Tuesday. The question had come from Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS. Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, one of the biggest oil producers in the Bakken Shale, was one of three oil-company chief executives speaking from the stage during a panel at the IHS CERAWeek energy conference at the Hilton Americas-Houston. So why haven’t U.S. shale producers tried to tap...

A bill being debated in the Texas Legislature that would severely limit local municipalities' power to regulate oil and natural gas drilling moved one step closer to becoming law Monday. In a 125-20 vote, the Republican-dominated Texas House of Representatives approved on third reading H.B. 40. The legislation would "expressly pre-empt local ordinances that ban or limit oil and gas operations," including hydraulic fracturing. The bill will now move to the state Senate, which, like the House, is Republican-controlled. If passed by both houses of the legislature it will move to the desk of Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who has...

Legislation to set standards for cities that wish to regulate the oil and gas drilling within their city limits passed the Texas House Friday with more than two-thirds approval. House Bill 40 heads to the Texas Senate Monday, where, if it can sustain the momentum that’s carried it this far, could soon become law. And that’s got some special interests groups in a tizzy. “If some Austin lawmakers are successful, oil and gas drilling could be coming to a school, playground of daycare center near you,” wrote Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas in an opinion piece published in the...

In a move that once again isn't exactly shocking, Halliburton Co. has been engaging in much more serious layoffs than they initially planned on back in February. Back in the early part of the year -- when energy analysts were confidently predicting oil prices would rebound in no time at all -- Halliburton still battened down the hatches, announcing plans for about 6,500 layoffs. Since then the analysts have for the most part gotten increasingly dour with their predictions, oil prices have stayed around $50 a barrel and Halliburton has actually laid off about 10 percent of its workforce in...

Baker Hughes Inc., one of the world's largest oil and gas service companies, said it will increase job cuts worldwide to 10,500, or about 17 percent of its total workforce. The Houston-based company said the cuts are necessary in order to weather a crash in North American drilling prompted by low oil prices. Baker Hughes announced the additional cuts Tuesday (April 21) after reporting a $32 million loss for the first quarter this year. The company's first-quarter revenue was down 20 percent compared to the same period a year ago. Earlier this year, Baker Hughes said it planned to cut...

When oil prices recover—and plenty of analysts think the climb back up will start soon—Canada’s western frontier of Saskatchewan and neighboring Alberta will ‘still have the edge’, according to a report from TD Economics. Depressed oil prices may have skewed the view from Canada’s oil-producing west, but this will be one of the better places to bet on the oil rebound. Saskatchewan remains the last highly accessible onshore North American oil frontier and it is home to part of the prolific Williston Basin. And as the industry gears up for the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference (WBPC) on 28 April, the...

Oil executives have been making headlines recently, due to large purchases of their own company’s stock. In fact, insider buying in the oil industry is higher than any other industry, except the machinery industry. Who’s buying? Major insider purchases for the month of March were made by Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI) and Diamond Offshore Drilling (NYSE: DO). Diamond Offshore Drilling’s CEO, Corp Loews, purchased 685,373 shares on the open market, and Rich Kinder, CEO of Kinder Morgan, purchased 100,000 shares of Kinder Morgan. In March, Rich Kinder and Corp Loews weren’t the only executives buying company stock. The Director of...

The dam is about to burst in the Northeast. The question is who will drown in the coming flood of natural gas? BTU Analytics is currently tracking 42 Bcf/d of Northeast projects coming online through 2018. Of that capacity, 14.6 Bcf/d will help carry gas out of the region. Some of the most notable of these projects are Energy Transfer’s Rover Pipeline at 3.25 Bcf/d, Spectra’s Nexus Pipeline at 1.5 Bcf/d, and a series of REX Pipeline expansions bringing the pipe’s total east to west capacity to 2.6 Bcf/d. Infrastructure constraints in the Marcellus and Utica have been the norm...

If you or I lived rent free for five years in an apartment in pricey Washington, DC, we would have to pay income taxes on the value of the rent on the place. But apparently not Rahm Emanuel. The wonderful Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times writes: We already knew that BP and its folks were significant contributors to the record $750-million war chest of Barack Obama's 2007-08 campaign. Now, we learn the details of a connection of Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayoral wannabe, current Obama chief of staff, ex-representative, ex-Clinton money man and ex-Windy City political machine go-fer. Shortly...

The largest oil and gas companies are employing different strategies to weather the downturn and plan for the future. Each strategy has its risks, and not all may work out. Which companies will emerge stronger after an oil price rebound and which will fall further behind because of bad decisions? There are different ways to play a down cycle. With oil prices half of what they were in 2014, revenues are significantly lower for everyone across the board. As a result, the oil industry has collectively implemented an estimated $114 billion in spending cuts. But oil executives are also trying...

[This is from the International Edition of SCMP] China has won the bid to co-produce a multibillion ($3Billion) long-range air and missile defence system in Turkey, in what is its largest and most advanced arms sales to a NATO country. The Turkish defence minister announced the decision to approve the US$3 billion bid by China Precision Machinery Import and Export Corp, rejecting rival offers from Russian, US and European firms. The winning Chinese FD-2000 system beat the Patriot, the Russian S-400 and the French-Italian Eurosam Samp-T, it was announced on Thursday. [snip]

There is mounting evidence that oil prices are poised to rebound from a historic bust. Rig counts hit new lows each week. For the week ending on April 17, Baker Hughes says the U.S. lost an additional 34 oil and gas rigs, bringing the total down to 954. Domestic crude oil production appears to have plateaued and the EIA expects a contraction in May. Nearly every driller is dramatically scaling back spending, which should increasingly cut into new output. And oil consumption is finally picking up, as drivers far and wide take advantage of cheap fuel. But what if the...

Today on HERE AND THERE: It's clear now, it's not just an oil price drop, but an oil price war, being waged by Saudi Arabia. Among the targets: the new generation of NM shale oil drillers that have made the United States at least temporarily energy-sufficient. Economist Daniel Fine of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy has a petroleum battlefield report.

..... Obama's approval rating is shifting back toward positive territory, as the public's take on the economy hits a new high mark for Obama's tenure, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. For the first time since May of 2013, more Americans polled say they have a positive impression of how Obama is handling the presidency than a negative one: 48% approve of the way Obama is handling his job, while 47% disapprove.

Financial markets underpinning the U.S. shale boom have emerged as the world’s de facto regulator of global oil production, taking over from the Saudi Arabia-led cartel that effectively abdicated its decades-old role in November, a top IHS researcher said Monday. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries “is not what it used to be; it’s no longer the balancer of the oil market,” said Jim Burkhard, chief researcher of global oil markets for IHS, during a panel on the first day of the week-long IHS Energy CERAWeek conference at the Hilton Americas-Houston. For a generation, Burkhard said, OPEC could influence...

Lifting sanctions against Iran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program won’t immediately flood the world with oil as some have feared, recently retired U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns said Monday. His comments, made on the opening day of the five-day IHS Energy CERAWeek conference Monday, addressed the concerns that have rocked oil markets as diplomats met in Switzerland to hammer out the details of a deal to cut off Iran’s pathways to making a nuclear bomb. News leaking out of the negotiations caused oil prices to swing wildly in the days leading up to the framework...

After the price of oil quadrupled in 1973, Syria and other Arab states put pressure on Saudi Arabia to use its new wealth against Israel. Part of the Saudi government's response was to lead a campaign against support for Israel in the U.S. On their own, however, the Saudis lacked the connections and savvy to affect American-Israeli ties. To make up for this, the Saudi state recruited help. In "The American House of Saud" (Franklin Watts, 448 pages, $18.95), Steven Emerson, a journalist and former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chronicles anti-Israeli activities undertaken in recent years...