The US Department of Energy (DOE) selected four new projects to receive up to $8.4 million to establish new geothermal energy and heat production from abandoned oil and gas wells. With this funding, DOE is partnering with existing well owners and operators to use their idle or unproductive wells to... Read more →
Global oil consumption outpaced oil production for the six consecutive quarters ending with the fourth quarter of 2021 (4Q21), which has led to persistent withdrawals from global oil inventories and significant increases in crude oil prices. Crude oil production remained restrained as a result of curtailments by OPEC+ members, investment... Read more →
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that US oil production will average 12.4 million barrels per day during 2023, surpassing the record high for domestic crude oil production set in 2019. In its January Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA forecasts US crude oil production will increase for nine consecutive... Read more →
ExxonMobil made two oil discoveries at Fangtooth-1 and Lau Lau-1 in the Stabroek block offshore Guyana. These discoveries will add to the previously announced recoverable resource estimate for the block, of 10 billion oil-equivalent barrels. The Fangtooth-1 well encountered approximately 164 feet (50 meters) of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs. The... Read more →
Underinvestment in oil and gas development extended into a second year in 2021 even as global energy demand rebounded, raising the prospect of price shocks, scarcity and growing energy poverty, according to a new report by the International Energy Forum (IEF) and IHS Markit. The report underlines concerns about the... Read more →
The price of US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil is near its highest level since 2014, increasing rapidly from low prices in mid-2020 as demand returns faster than supply, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Because of the economic effects, government and business responses, and personal... Read more →
Phillips 66 plans to convert its Alliance Refinery in Belle Chasse, La., to a terminal facility. The refinery suffered significant damage from flooding from Hurricane Ida in August. The conversion is expected to take place in 2022. We made this decision after exploring several options and considering the investment needed... Read more →
New research led by Mohammad Masnadi, assistant professor of chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, offers a closer look at the relationship between decreasing demand for oil and a resilient, varied oil market—and the carbon footprint associated with both. An open-access paper on... Read more →
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing comprehensive new regulations to reduce methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industry—including, for the first time, reductions from existing sources nationwide. Source: EPA Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that traps about 30 times as much heat as carbon dioxide... Read more →
Petroleum refining produces approximately 13% of US industrial greenhouse gas emissions and approximately 3% of all US emissions. While the US is seeking to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels rapidly, some demand will remain for petroleum refinery products in the coming decades. For the US to meet its current... Read more →
TotalEnergies E&P Angola has exercised an option for the 7th-generation drillship Maersk Voyager to drill the ultra-deepwater Ondjaba-1 exploration well in Angola’s Block 48. The Ondjaba-1 well will be drilled at a new world record water depth of 3,628 m (2.25 miles). The current world record is 3,400 m, set... Read more →
Every year, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) posts an Annual Crude Average carbon intensity calculation, using the the Oil Production Greenhouse Gas Emission Estimator (OPGEE) Model. Crude oil from California, Alaska and 11 countries account for 95% of the volume supplied to California in any given year. Source: CARB... Read more →
ExxonMobil increased its estimate of the discovered recoverable resource for the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana (earlier post) to approximately 10 billion oil-equivalent barrels. The updated resource estimate includes a new discovery at the Cataback-1 well, which brings the total significant discoveries to more than 20 within the Stabroek Block. The... Read more →
INEOS will invest an additional £1 billion (US$1.4 billion) in Grangemouth, its integrated refinery and petrochemicals complex in Scotland, in the next phase of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2045. Grangemouth Grangemouth, one of Scotland’s largest manufacturing sites, is owned and operated by INEOS and Petroineos, a... Read more →
For the first time, the IHS Markit base case scenario for refined products expects total global demand in 2050 to be lower than 2019 levels. However, other more drastic scenarios for falling demand remain unlikely under present conditions. The findings are part of a new analysis by the Refining and... Read more →
ExxonMobil has made a discovery at Pinktail in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana. The Pinktail well encountered 220 feet (67 meters) of net pay in high quality hydrocarbon bearing sandstone reservoirs. In addition to successful appraisal of the Turbot discovery, the Turbot-2 well encountered 43 feet (13 meters) of net... Read more →
Anglo-Australian BHP Group is merging its oil and gas business with Woodside Petroleum Ltd. The all-stock merger will create a global top 10 independent energy company by production, and will also allow BHP to focus more intently on “future-facing commodities” that are most positively leveraged towards population growth, rising living... Read more →
On Wednesday, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan issued a statement calling on OPEC+ to increase oil production: While OPEC+ recently agreed to production increases, these increases will not fully offset previous production cuts that OPEC+ imposed during the pandemic until well into 2022. At a critical moment in the... Read more →
ExxonMobil said it made a discovery at Whiptail in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana. The Whiptail-1 well encountered 246 feet (75 meters) of net pay in high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs. Drilling is also ongoing at the Whiptail-2 well, which has encountered 167 feet (51 meters) of net pay in high-quality... Read more →
Despite volatility in global oil markets, US crude oil exports reached a record high in 2020, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). As of 9 July 2021, US crude oil exports have averaged 3.00 million barrels per day (b/d). The most recent four-week rolling average of US crude... Read more →
A new study from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and WWF finds that nearly 20% of tropical Intact Forest Landscapes (IFLs) overlap with concessions for extractive industries such as mining, oil and gas. The total area of overlap is 376,449 square miles (975,000 square kilometers), about the size of Egypt. The... Read more →
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected both consumer and commercial transportation, but global oil demand will probably continue to grow through 2030, according to a new study. Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and the University of California, Davis Institute of Transportation Studies analyzed four scenarios to understand how... Read more →
bp released the 70th annual edition of the bp Statistical Review of World Energy; the data collected in this year’s edition includes energy data for 2020. The Review captures the significant impact the global pandemic had on energy markets and how it may shape future global energy trends. Both primary... Read more →
Canada-based TC Energy Corporation has filed a Notice of Intent to initiate a legacy North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) claim under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to recover economic damages resulting from the revocation of the Keystone XL Project’s Presidential Permit. TC Energy says it will be seeking to recover... Read more →
bp announced the safe start-up of the Manuel project in the US Gulf of Mexico, the fourth of five major projects expected to be delivered globally in 2021. Manuel includes a new subsea production system for two new wells tied into the Na Kika platform. The wells are expected to... Read more →
In the June Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that rising global production of petroleum and other liquid fuels (driven by OPEC, Russia, and the United States) will limit price increases for global crude oil benchmarks Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI). EIA forecasts production... Read more →
In 2020, net petroleum imports (total imports minus exports) were negative for the first time since the US Energy Information Administration began tracking them—i.e., the United States exported more petroleum than it imported. This includes crude oil and petroleum products. Net imports peaked in 2005 at 12.5 million barrels per... Read more →
Each year, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) posts the Annual Crude Average carbon intensity for crude oil delivered to California refineries. In 2020, although the volume of crude supplied to refineries dropped to 476,730,992 barrels from 584,313,143 the year before, the average carbon intensity (CI) rose to 13.41 gCO2e/MJ... Read more →
ExxonMobil announced an oil discovery at the Uaru-2 well in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana (earlier post). Uaru-2 will add to the previously announced gross discovered recoverable resource estimate for the block, which is currently estimated to be approximately 9 billion oil-equivalent barrels. Drilling at Uaru-2 encountered approximately 120 feet... Read more →
California Governor Gavin Newsom has directed the Department of Conservation’s Geologic Energy Management (CalGEM) Division to initiate regulatory action to end the issuance of new permits for hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) by January 2024. Additionally, Governor Newsom requested that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) analyze pathways to phase out oil... Read more →
A team of scientists from Heriot-Watt University has found the waters in the Faroe-Shetland Channel (FSC) are teeming with oil-eating bacteria. The FSC is a deepwater sub-Arctic region where the oil and gas industry has been active for the last 40 years. An open-access paper on the research was published in... Read more →
US crude oil production averaged 11.3 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2020, down 935,000 b/d (8%) from the record annual average high of 12.2 million b/d in 2019, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The 2020 decrease in production was the largest annual decline in the EIA’s... Read more →
IBM announced that bp has joined the IBM Quantum Network to advance the use of quantum computing in the energy industry. IBM Quantum is an industry-first initiative to build universal quantum systems for business and science applications. By joining the IBM Quantum Network as an Industry Partner, bp will have... Read more →
The recent announcement by GM that it aspires to phase out sales of oil-powered light vehicles (LVs) by 2035 (earlier post)—part of a broader proposal to make the automaker a net-zero-carbon company—is a prominent signpost that oil demand from LVs has already peaked, according to a new analysis by Jim... Read more →
Global oil and gas major Shell has outlined how it will achieve its target to be a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050, in step with society’s progress towards achieving net zero. This target covers the emissions from its operations and the emissions from the use of all the energy... Read more →
Norway-based energy company Equinor Energy and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for a low-carbon technology collaboration. The non-exclusive cooperation agreement will see both companies develop and use technology to reduce the carbon footprint of oil & gas operations. In particular, the companies will look at... Read more →
By making use of a previously undesired side effect in oil recovery, researchers at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT) have developed a method that yields up to 20% more heavy oil than traditional methods. A paper on the work is published in the ACS journal Energy & Fuels.... Read more →
BASF now has the worldwide distribution rights for RheoFalt smart additives to modify asphalt and bitumen manufactured by the Netherlands-based company Ventraco. Excluded from the agreement are Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands, where Ventraco will continue to supply the products. RheoFalt HP-AM, a powerful rejuvenator, enables 100% recycling of old... Read more →
ExxonMobil has made its final investment decision to proceed with the Payara field offshore development in Guyana after receiving government approvals. Payara is the third project in the Stabroek Block and is expected to produce up to 220,000 barrels of oil per day after startup in 2024, using the Prosperity... Read more →
Nearly half—48%—of rail tank cars carrying Class 3 flammable liquids in 2019 in the US met the new safety requirements, up from 33% in 2018, according to Fleet Composition of Rail Tank Cars Carrying Flammable Liquids: 2020 Report released today by the US Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.... Read more →
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is denying petitions for small refinery exemptions for past compliance years, the so-called “gap-filling” petitions for the 2011-18 compliance years. In total, the agency had received 68 retroactive exemption requests from petroleum refiners seeking to skirt obligations under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS); the... Read more →
Italy-based Snam, a leading energy infrastructure operator, and Saipem, an Italian multinational oilfield services company, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to start working together to define and to develop initiatives for green hydrogen production and transport, and for carbon dioxide capture, transport and reuse or storage (CCS and CCU).... Read more →
by Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com. Big Oil has frequently been chided for merely trying to burnish its green credentials, and so far, it has done little to convince us that it is truly moving forward to greenness. Despite the much-vaunted megatrend involving the global electrification drive and shift to renewable... Read more →
Diakont is part of a team that was awarded $5 million in funding from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) Rapid Encapsulation of Pipelines Avoiding Intensive Replacement (REPAIR) program (earlier post) to develop new technologies for rehabilitating legacy cast iron and bare steel natural gas distribution... Read more →
Phillips 66, a diversified energy manufacturing and logistics company, plans to reconfigure its San Francisco Refinery in Rodeo, California, to produce renewable fuels. The plant would no longer produce fuels from crude oil, but instead would make fuels from used cooking oil, fats, greases and soybean oils. The Phillips 66... Read more →
Oil markets have returned to relatively stable ground with Brent prices within a narrow $40-$45 per barrel range and could conclusively pass the $50 per barrel mark in the second half of 2021, according to Roger Diwan and the IHS Markit Energy Advisory Service. The IHS Markit Brent price outlook... Read more →
Researchers from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel have found that considerable quantities of the greenhouse gas methane escape uncontrolled into the water from abandoned oil and gas wells in the North Sea. The work, published in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, confirms earlier studies based... Read more →
Scientists from ExxonMobil, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Imperial College of London have published in the journal Science joint research on potential breakthroughs in a new membrane technology that could reduce emissions and energy intensity associated with refining crude oil. Laboratory tests indicate the patent-pending membrane could be used... Read more →
When processing petroleum, refineries can produce products in varying amounts to meet regional demands. The International Energy Agency’s Monthly Oil Statistics shows that there are differences in refinery output throughout the world. In the Americas, gasoline accounted for just above 40% of the products refined from petroleum in 2019, while... Read more →
Total US petroleum exports have been increasing over the last 10 years, reaching an all-time high of 8.5 million barrels per day (mmbd) in 2019. The United States exported 1.2 mmbd of petroleum to Mexico in 2019, which was 14% of total US petroleum exports, according to the US Energy... Read more →