Shell has made a vote of confidence in electric cars by buying electric charging company NewMotion, a company that manages 30,000 residential and business charging stations, and offers access to 50,000 more.
Hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – has been at the center of controversies about contaminating water sources and causing earthquakes.
India is particularly important for Aramco, which is looking for refinery stakes in major oil-consuming economies to lock in customers ahead of its Initial Public Offering next year.
According to Ian Taylor, the head of oil trader Vitol, U.S. oil output could have a spike in 2018 before growth flattens for a number of years. Vitol expects U.S. output to climb by 0.5-0.6 million barrels per day next year but the increase would cause cost inflation and make some production loss-making. The anticipated slowdown in U.S. output combined with robust growth in global demand for oil should push prices above the current range of $50-60 per barrel, Taylor said. Vitol has sold most of its oil in storage as it believes the market is tightening.
Next-generation technology will connect workers, suppliers, customers and assets through a reimagined business model. By leveraging Internet of Things enabled devices, the oil industry could turn insight into action. By using connected instruments from wellheads or pipelines to an integrated data repository, data sources will have increased insight into production. A cloud-based solution that aligns with talent as well as procurement provides integrated support to the supplier network, creating increased efficiency and cost savings. By optimization oil companies will have more time and resources to invest in technology to help increase oil reserves.
Jonathan Chanis, vice president of policy at Securing America’s Future Energy considers that an oil supply shortage and price spikes of $80-$100 a barrel could hit the global oil market by the 2020s if producers do not fund major projects soon. He adds that rising US tight oil supply will not be able to stop this trend. Investment declined 40% in 2015 and 2016 and has been flat so far this year, he said. The number of megaprojects approved in the next year to two years will determine if that shortage arrives.
ExxonMobil has discovered more oil on the Stabroek block offshore Guyana, northeast Latin America, with the Turbot-1 well. Turbot is ExxonMobil’s latest discovery to date in the country, adding to previous discoveries at Liza, Payara, Snoek, and Liza Deep. Steve Greenlee, president of ExxonMobil Exploration Co., said on this that: “The results from this latest well further illustrate the tremendous potential we see from our exploration activities offshore Guyana.” Eventhough the country is not an oil producer at the moment Woodmac expects production to be around 350,000 to 400,000 barrels a day by 2026.
While there’s a risk oil may slide below $30 as it is displaced by alternative energy sources, it will still be used to make petrochemicals, said Ye Jianming, the head of CEFC, the Chinese company that has bought a $9 billion stake in Rosneft. CEFC plans to work with Rosneft and Abu Dhabi to produce petrochemicals for the Chinese market, he added. The company currently has more than 80 million metric tons of foreign crude oil equity, of which 42 million tons is from Rosneft, 13 million tons is from Abu Dhabi and the remaining from Chad and Kazakhstan.
The U.S. company prior to the auction. Exxon Mobil has vastly expanded its presence in Brazil by winning 10 blocks in the country’s 14th round of bidding for oil exploration and production rights. Previously the company was among the few oil majors without a presence in the exploration of the recently discovered large offshore fields in Brazil. Exxon Mobil took six blocks in consortia with state-controlled oil giant Petrobras in the promising offshore Campos basin. The auction was Brazil’s 14th round for blocks outside of the coveted pre-salt area and should gauge appetite for the country’s second and third pre-salt rounds.
A blockchain-based energy-sharing token named the “Jouliette” has been launched at De Ceuvel, an experimental innovation community in Amsterdam powered by renewables.
“U.S. crude is becoming more and more popular,” said the world’s biggest refiner Sinopec. There are three reasons for Asian oil buyers’ interest in U.S. crude: first, it fits the configuration of Asian refineries, which like to process high quality so-called light sweet crude that yields more petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel. Second, it’s cheap, with WTI trading at times at a steep discount to other oil benchmarks. Third, the cargoes are bought on a spot basis, giving refiners flexibility to complement their more traditional Middle Eastern supplies that are sourced via long-term contracts.
Vaca Muerta is the most developed shale play outside North America and has attracted over $9 billion in capital investments since 2010 to drill nearly 700 wells in the play.
