Oil And Gas Sector Vulnerable To Cyberattacks

lweb.es/f2584 01.19.2017

cybersecurity, gas, Oil, USA

Critical U.S. infrastructure, including oil and gas pipelines, is vulnerable to cyberattacks. Because no major breaches have recently been announced, the topic of cybersecurity in the oil and gas space has been quiet. That doesn’t mean that the threat of cyberattacks has gone away, Ken Talanian from Evercore said. The Saudi Aramco hack in 2012 – when an unleashed virus erased data from three-quarters of Aramco’s corporate personal computers – would have served as a wakeup call for the industry if the Stuxnet attack in 2010 on an Iranian nuclear facility didn’t.

Woodmac: Global Upstream Projects To Double In 2017

lweb.es/f2617 01.17.2017

Oil, Trump, World

According to Wood Mackenzie, final investment decisions are expected to double globally in 2017, rising to more than twenty in 2017 compared with just nine in 2016, while exploration and production spending will increase for the first time since 2014. Woodmac sees confidence beginning to return to the industry, with E&P spending up 3% to $450 billion and with costs expected to decline marginally. US Lower 48 spending is set to rise 23% to $61 billion, with upside if oil prices rise markedly and US independents are emboldened by a Trump presidency.

China’s Oil Production Drop Helps OPEC Cut Global Supply

lweb.es/f2609 01.17.2017

China, Iraq, Oil, OPEC, production

China’s production is forecast to fall by as much as 7 percent this year, extending a record decline in 2016. This is about the same size as the recent output cut agreed by OPEC member Iraq. China’s output slumped in 2016 as state-owned firms shut wells at mature fields that had become too costly to operate after the crash. Crude production fell 6.9 percent in the first 11 months of 2016 to about 4 million barrels a day, the first decline since 2009 and the biggest in data going back to 1990.