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U.S. energy major Chevron plans to withdraw from a $10 billion shale gas deal with Kiev, a senior Ukrainian presidential official said on Monday. Ukraine signed a shale gas production-sharing agreement with Chevron amid great fanfare in November 2013, just months before mass protests in Kiev ousted former president Viktor Yanukovich, plunging the country into a major crisis with Russia. "There is information that they (Chevron) are planning this decision," Valeriy Chaliy told journalists, referring to a report by local media that Chevron had told the government it was pulling out of the deal. Chaliy declined to give further details....

First: new oil well permits collapse 40% in November; why is this an issue? Because since December 2007, or roughly the start of the global depression, shale oil states have added 1.36 million jobs while non-shale states have lost 424,000 jobs.  *  *  *This should help clear things up. According to a new study, investments in oil and gas exploration and production generate substantial economic gains, as well as other benefits such as increased energy independence.  The Perryman Group estimates that the industry as a whole generates an economic stimulus of almost $1.2 trillion in gross product each year, as well...

...“In 2016, when OPEC completes this objective of cleaning up the American marginal market, the oil price will start growing again,” said Fedun. “The shale boom is on a par with the dot-com boom. The strong players will remain, the weak ones will vanish.” No surprise, Friday was a bloodbath for shares of America’s oil and gas independents. Goodrich Petroleum fell 34% on the day, and is off 79% in three months. Swift Energy fell 30%, Penn Virginia and Sanchez Energy down 29%, SandRidge 26%. Some of these, like Swift, are highly leveraged, and there’s even some concern that bidding...

What does it take to build up a new region for oil and gas development? Obviously, the resources have to be in place and economically recoverable. But it is not as easy as just sticking a drill into the ground and pumping out oil and gas. Even with significant oil and gas reserves trapped in shale, a variety of factors need to come together to turn a given region into a significant producer. To begin with, there needs to be enough companies willing to take risks on major drilling projects. Next, there needs to be enough capital behind those companies...

On election night, voters in Denton, Texas, a city of about 113,000 people northwest of Dallas, voted to ban fracking within the city limits. Appeals were immediately filed; Denton is in oil and gas country – in the Barnett Shale – where fossil fuel resources are not only creating significant growth for the industry, but also lining the coffers of local municipalities and governmental entities within the state. To find out more about what the ban means, and what lies ahead, Rigzone interviewed Mark A. Plummer, CEO and owner of Chestnut Exploration Companies, headquartered in Richardson, a suburb of Dallas,...

Total U.S. natural gas gross withdrawals reached a new high at 82 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2013, with shale gas wells becoming the largest source of total natural gas production. Natural gas gross withdrawals are a measure of full well stream production including all natural gas plant liquids and nonhydrocarbon gases after oil, lease condensate, and water have been removed. According to the Natural Gas Annual, gross withdrawals from shale gas wells increased from 5 Bcf/d in 2007 to 33 Bcf/d in 2013, representing 40% of total natural gas production, and surpassing production from nonshale natural gas...

My favorite quote by H.L. Mencken is ‘a cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin‘. A bit morose, I know, but this appeals to the contrarian in me. My second favorite is überly-applicable to US shale oil break-evens: ‘For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong‘. For there is no lack of estimates flying around as to the price level at which US shale oil production could be curtailed. The problem is, they all appear to be different. The debate was ignited by OPEC, after comments from...

Energy Transport: New data show fast-rising rail shipments from North Dakota's Bakken shale formation and the need for a safer alternative to rail — like the Keystone XL pipeline. In his post-election press conference, the president noted in justifying his continual kicking of the Keystone XL oil drum down the road that "while this debate about Canadian oil has been raging ... we've seen some of the biggest increases in American oil production and natural gas production in our history." That increase is due in large part to oil recovered from the Bakken shale formation centered on North Dakota. So...

Rick Perry ascended from Lieutenant Governor to Governor of Texas in December 2000 when then-governor George Bush resigned after being elected the 43rd President of the United States. Perry will retire in January with the tenth longest gubernatorial tenure in U.S. history. Perry made job creation one of his principle mantras, and he has overseen remarkable employment gains under his watch with 2.1 million jobs added during his tenure. The total represents 30% of the jobs added in the U.S. since 2000 and more than twice as many as any other state. The so-called “Texas miracle” does not show any...

The energy boom unleashed by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling couldn’t have happened anywhere but America, says author and journalist Gregory Zuckerman. Zuckerman say America’s entrepreneurial spirit, knowledge and property rights make fracking a uniquely American story. “This reaffirms the concept of American exceptionalism,” Zuckerman told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “We’ve got advantages the rest of the world doesn’t have and it’s going to lead to America’s economic dominance for the next few years.” Zuckerman’s new book “The Frackers” is the story of how a few desperate entrepreneurs and wild cat drillers risked everything to extract oil and natural...

Opec is likely to let the price of oil slide further as it gambles that US shale oil producers will be forced to slow production first. The oil cartel, which includes a number of Persian Gulf states, as well as Nigeria and Venezuela, has remained silent as oil prices have tumbled over recent months. Some analysts have predicted the oil producers club will decide to reduce production at its next meeting, scheduled for November, in a bid to maintain price levels at around $100 a barrel. Yet, with a barrel of crude oil currently at $82.37 (£50.90, €64.69), the member...

Wayne Woolsey, an oilman since 1958, says he has core samples pulled from deep below the shale rock here that “look awful promising,” comparable to what has been found elsewhere in the country where fracking has brought plentiful jobs and enriched land owners and energy companies. So, Woolsey said, he was stunned when a Twitter account with his company’s name and his portrait surfaced with links to complaints about fracking along with a letter with his signature that informed more than 200 property owners in another county that he was terminating leases on land where he planned to drill. “We...

Crude oil prices have dropped below $80 a barrel, down more than 20 percent just since June, meaning price estimates by the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) have been far too pessimistic. And these low prices — and the fear that they could go even lower — are making a number of oil industry people increasingly nervous, with some prediciting that the prices are getting so low that oil companies are going to stop new drilling and even cut back on production from already drilled wells. On October 7, the EIA estimated that prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude...

The good citizens of Denton will be voting on Nov. 4 whether or not to ban hydraulic fracturing. They have been told by former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Phillips the ban on fracturing is unconstitutional. “Under the Texas Constitution, I do not believe that a municipality may ban all oil and gas drilling within its borders,” former Chief Justice Phillips said during a hearing before the Denton City Council on July 15. He said the ban is incompatible with state law, and it amounts to a government taking of private property of many mineral interest owners and operators....

Crude prices have plunged by more than 20% in recent months. The fall means cheaper gas, cheaper flights, and generally good news for American consumers. Oil prices have been falling for months, and the slide could easily continue. With unprecedented instability in the Middle East, how could this be happening? The answer, according to analysts who follow the market, is a little bit of everything, from economic fundamentals in big oil consuming countries to growth in output among some oil producers. But much more clear is the effect of tumbling prices: Low oil prices are the equivalent of a massive...

LONDON, Oct 13 Crude oil and condensates from the United States have a break even price of below $60. OPEC members clamoring for urgent output cuts, to push prices back above $100 a barrel, suck "heavily" on oil exports. Big Dog, Wahabi Arabia is telling the Oil Cartel, they (can't find any way to empower their PotUS) are comfortable with markedly lower oil prices for an extended period, a sharp shift in policy aimed at slowing the expansion in the U.S. shale patch.

...By all logic, we should be working to sustain the boom. We aren’t, and therein lies a classic example of how good policy is held hostage to bad politics and public relations. What would promote continued exploration is a lifting of the current U.S. ban on exporting crude oil. Let producers sell into the world market. But that seems (wrongly) an unjustified giveaway to industry. The public perceptions are atrocious. Hardly anyone expected the oil boom, with some notable exceptions — prominently Harold Hamm, who pioneered North Dakota’s Bakken field. “Fracking” (the injection of pressurized water into fields to make...

From steel pipe manufacturers to companies that produce sand and gravel, the U.S. shale boom is buoying businesses far removed from the oil and gas fields, a new study finds. These companies are benefiting from the huge investments needed to explore, produce, process and transport oil and gas unlocked from previously inaccessible dense rock formations through advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, according to the findings by Houston-based energy analyst firm IHS. The boom has been most generous to companies working in states with the most oil and gas activity, but the economic boost has also trickled down to...

Despite turning the U.S. into the world's largest producer of natural gas and driving a 3 million barrel per day surge in U.S. oil production in just the last three years, the shale revolution still has its doubters. They couldn't be more wrong. The Montreal-based Centre for Research on Globalization recently dismissed shale fracking as a "Ponzi scheme" and "this decade's version of the dot-com bubble" that's about to burst. But time and again over decades, the naysayers and "peak oil" advocates have grossly underestimated the energy industry's ability to innovate and beat production forecasts. Today's shale pessimists continue to...

The skyrocketing growth of unconventional oil and natural gas production in the United States has ignited an intense debate on the impact of energy exports on U.S. energy and economic security and its foreign policy. In “Changing Markets: Economic Opportunities from Lifting the U.S. Ban on Crude Oil Exports,” Charles Ebinger and Heather Greenley worked with National Economic Research Associates (NERA) to examine the economic and national security impacts of lifting the ban on crude oil exports. Learn eights facts about U.S. crude oil production within the key findings outlined below, and download the full report. U.S. Economic Benefits Key...