OEF REVIEW: President Putin talks with Charlie Rose about: the Islamic State and Syria; his relations with President Obama; how Russia and the U.S. cooperate for a better world; about his popularity in Russia; his views on the U.S.; Ukraine and the Minsk agreements; the disintegration of the USSR; the Baltic States; and what he sees as his legacy.
Statoil and its partners have put the first subsea gas compression facility on line at Aasgard in the Norwegian Sea. Subsea compression will add some 306 million barrels of oil equivalent to total output over the field’s life.
The beginning of a long-tern drop in upstream oil and gas investment could be seen if low oil prices are sustained. Such upstream investment is highly sensitive to changes in oil prices.
Risk assessment in the oil sands industry should consider the repeated decadal droughts that are a common feature of the regional hydroclimate but have not occurred since the industry was established. The long-term trends and variability in river flow examined in this paper extend beyond the Athabasca River Basin, and thus the lessons for water resource management are transferrable to watersheds across Canada’s western interior.
OEF REVIEW: Decline rates in conventional fields will play a critical part in rebalancing the oil market and determining where oil prices settle in the longer term. Decline rates will cut output by several million barrels a day in 2016 and 2017 unless oil producers invest to maintain production levels from existing fields and develop replacement fields.
Baker Hughes Incorporated announced that the worldwide rig count for August 2015 was 2,226, up 59 from the 2,167 counted in July 2015, and down 1,416 from the 3,642 counted in August 2014. The average U.S. rig count for August 2015 was 883, up 17 from the 866 counted in July 2015, and down 1,021 from the 1,904 counted in August 2014.
Crude oil production for October from seven major U.S. shale plays is expected to drop 80,000 barrels a day to 5.21 million b/d.
“Drillers will increasingly contend with diminished backlogs,rig values,fleet sizes, and margins if oil prices do not bounce back to the $70-80/bbl range, which we believe could support an increase in shallow-water, deepwater, and ultra-deepwater drilling”, says Moody’s in an industry report.
Total has entered a special licensing agreement with Eni for use of Eni Slurry Technology (EST), which has been developed by the Italian operator to convert heavy bottom-of-the-barrel feedstock into lighter, high-value products.
U.S. Federal waters in offshore Alaska are estimated to hold around 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the vast majority of which is located in the Arctic. Experts believe that the Chukchi Sea may represent one of the world’s largest sources of untapped oil and gas.
The OPEC Reference Basket fell to average $45.46 a barrel in August. This was mostly attributed to sell-offs amid enduring oversupply and Chinese economic turbulence. Demand for OPEC crude is estimated at 29.3 million barrels per day in 2015, up 0.4 million barrels per day from the previous year.
Russia’s Energy Minister, Alexander Novak, expects that cuts in global shale oil production will help stabilize the oil market. He adds that Russia would not cut its own production which is currently standing around 10.7 million barrels per day.
Venezuela started importing light crude last year for the first time in its history. Most of the oil is being used as a diluent to formulate exportable blends.
“Oil’s price collapse is closing down high cost production from Eagle Ford in Texas to Russia and the North Sea, which may result in the loss next year of half a million barrels a day – the biggest decline in 24 years.”
Second-quarter 2015 financial statements from U.S. companies with onshore oil operations suggest continued financial strain for some companies. Some have turned to capital markets financing and have also reduced capital expenditures.
China imported 6.26 million barrels a day of crude in August – up 5.6% from the same month last year, but a 13.4$ drop from July this year. Almost half this growth has either gone into storage or been exported as fuels, it appears. Gasoline demand rose 17% over the first seven months of this year compared to the same period last year, but diesel consumption is weak.
How much is the economy slowing down? Why have markets reacted so much to the devaluation and to the shift to rely more on markets to set currency value? What happens next to the currency? What´s happening to the pace of economic reform?
Iranian oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh has said that most OPEC members would like to see crude prices at $70 to $80 a barrel. He considered that this price would be “fair” and added that Iran would boost output at any cost: “It’s our right to return to the level of production we historically had”.
Research and analysis company Statistics Norway expects oil prices “to remain low going forward”, before increasing to around $60 in 2018. The company aded that they expected the slump in Norway’s oil and gas sector to level off from 2016.
How resilient is Saudi Arabia to a projected deficit of 14-20% of GDP owing to the drop in oil prices? Saudi officials have a wider range of policy instruments in their toolkit than is sometimes perceived in the international media.
