US Department of the Interior has approved a scaled-back version of ConocoPhillips’ Willow Master Development Plan in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A). (Earlier post.) The Record of Decision (ROD) reduces the size of the project by denying two of the original five drill sites proposed by ConocoPhillips, which is seeking... Read more →

In 2022, US ethane demand increased by approximately 9%, or almost 0.2 million barrels per day (b/d), according to the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) Petroleum Supply Monthly. US production and consumption of ethane (a hydrocarbon gas liquid used almost exclusively as a feedstock in the petrochemical industry) has grown... Read more →

SLB (Schlumberger) introduced the EcoShield geopolymer cement-free system that minimizes the CO2 footprint of a well’s construction. This innovative technology eliminates up to 85% of embodied CO2 emissions compared with conventional well cementing systems, which include portland cement. The EcoShield geopolymer cement-free system matches the rheology, thickening time, and compressive... Read more →

Shell Offshore, a subsidiary of Shell plc, has started production at the Shell-operated Vito floating production facility in the US Gulf of Mexico (GoM). With an estimated peak production of 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, Vito is the company’s first deep-water platform in the GoM to employ a... Read more →

bp says that it will invest more in the energy transition and bp’s own transition, with up to $8 billion more slated for transition growth engines (TGEs) by 2030. These include higher-return bioenergy, and convenience & EV charging; and focusing hydrogen and renewables & power where bp can leverage integration.... Read more →

The Bureau of Land Management Alaska State Office recently released the final supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) for ConocoPhillips’s proposed Willow Master Development Plan in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A). The document addresses the flaws identified by the US District Court for the District of Alaska in its... Read more →

In its January 2023 Short-Term Energy Outlook, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that crude oil production in the United States will average 12.4 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2023 and 12.8 million b/d in 2024, surpassing the previous record of 12.3 million b/d set in 2019. In... Read more →

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects global consumption of liquid fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, to set new record highs in 2024. According to EIA’s January Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), global liquid fuel consumption will exceed 100 million barrels per day, on average, in 2023 for... Read more →

Liquid intermediates from pyrolysis and hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) can be co-processed in an oil refinery along with conventional crude oil. In an open-access paper in the journal Energy & Fuels, a team from VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, with colleagues from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Ghent University,... Read more →

In 2021, proved reserves of natural gas set a new record in the United States, and proved reserves of crude oil and lease condensate increased, but not quite to pre-pandemic levels, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Energy demand rose from the 2020 lows that resulted from the... Read more →

A team from the University of Calgary and Rice University has used flash joule heating (FJH) (earlier post) to convert low-value asphaltenes—a by-product of crude oil refining—into a high-value carbon allotrope, asphaltene-derived flash graphene (AFG). Flash graphene from asphaltenes. (A) Schematic conceptualization of sustainable valorization of asphaltene. (B) Photograph of... Read more →

The Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco), one of the world’s leading integrated energy and chemicals companies, and Shandong Energy Group, are exploring collaboration on integrated refining and petrochemical opportunities in China. The companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which includes a potential crude oil supply agreement and chemicals... Read more →

Equatorial Guinea’s Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons and the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) Ministry of Hydrocarbons signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at the Angola Oil & Gas (AOG) 2022 Conference & Exhibition to develop existing synergies across their respective upstream, downstream, energy infrastructure and logistics sectors. The... Read more →

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has issued Venezuela General License (GL) 41, authorizing Chevron Corporation to resume limited natural resource extraction operations in Venezuela. GL 41 authorizes: Production and lifting of petroleum or petroleum products produced by the Chevron JVs, and any related... Read more →

At the 45th Meeting of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) and the 33rd OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting (OPEC+) in Vienna, the organizations decided to cut crude oil production by 2 million barrels per day (mb/d), starting in November 2022. The adjustment will reduce OPEC+ production from 43,856 million... Read more →

In the first half of 2022 (January–June), US exports of petroleum products averaged nearly 6 million barrels per day (b/d), the most first-half-of-year exports in Petroleum Supply Monthly data, going back to 1973, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). US petroleum product exports increased in the first half... Read more →

Chevron New Energies, and Mitsui Oil Exploration (MOECO) signed a Joint Collaboration Agreement to explore the technical and commercial feasibility of advanced geothermal power generation in Japan. Building on Chevron and MOECO’s long-standing relationship, the new collaboration will study geothermal resource potential across Japan and will evaluate the effectiveness of... Read more →

Building on its capability of proactive transformation, Neste has initiated a strategic study on transitioning its refinery in Porvoo, Finland to non-crude oil refining and into a globally leading renewable and circular solutions site. Porvoo refinery Through co-processing and retrofitting of units, and benefiting from available refining assets, experience and... Read more →

Polymer-based membranes developed at KAUST could enable greener and cheaper industrial separation approaches. Their stability and selectivity can be tuned by thermal crosslinking to separate simple hydrocarbon mixtures and complex crude oil fractions. A paper on the work is published in Science. We report a versatile strategy to fabricate polytriazole... Read more →

Schlumberger, Aker Solutions and Subsea 7 will form a joint venture to drive innovation and efficiency in subsea production by helping customers unlock reserves and reduce cycle time. The agreement will bring together a portfolio of innovative technologies such as subsea gas compression, all-electric subsea production systems and other electrification... Read more →

The Department of the Interiorawarded an initial $560 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to 24 states to begin work to plug, cap and reclaim orphaned oil and gas wells. Eligible states have indicated that there are more than 10,000 high-priority well sites across the country ready for immediate remediation... Read more →

Asia is expected to register the highest refinery Fluid Catalytic Cracking Units (FCCU) capacity additions globally between 2022 and 2026, accounting for approximately 48% of the total capacity additions by 2026, according to GlobalData, a data and analytics company. Fluid catalytic cracking, a type of secondary unit operation in a... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $32 million in funding (DE-FOA-0002616) toward the research and development of new monitoring, measurement, and mitigation technologies to help detect, quantify, and reduce methane emissions across oil and natural gas producing regions of the United States. The United States has more... Read more →

In Asia and the Middle East, at least nine refinery projects are beginning operations or are scheduled to come online before the end of 2023, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). At their current planned capacities, they will add 2.9 million barrels per day (MMb/d) of global refinery... Read more →

ExxonMobil has made two new discoveries offshore Guyana to the southeast of the Liza and Payara developments in the Stabroek block. The discoveries at Seabob and Kiru-Kiru are the sixth and seventh in Guyana this year, with the total number of discoveries in Guyana at more than 25. (Earlier post.)... Read more →

Shell and Dow have started up an experimental unit to heat ethylene steam cracker furnaces electrically at the Energy Transition Campus Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This represents a key milestone in the companies’ joint technology program to electrify steam cracking furnaces, bringing the companies one step closer to decarbonizing one of... Read more →

As of May 2022, surplus crude oil production capacity in non-OPEC countries decreased by 80% compared with 2021, according to the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) new report Global Surplus Crude Oil Production Capacity. In 2021, 1.4 million barrels per day (b/d) of surplus production capacity was available in non-OPEC... Read more →

Imperial Oil Limited—Canada’s largest petroleum refiner, a major producer of crude oil, a key petrochemical producer and a leading fuels marketer—and E3 Lithium are collaborating to advance a direct-lithium-extraction pilot in Alberta, exploring the redevelopment of an historic oil field into a potential new leading source of lithium for Canada’s... Read more →

President Biden called on Congress to suspend the federal gas tax for the next 90 days, through the busy summer driving season—18 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24 cents per gallon for diesel. He also called on states to suspend their state gas taxes as well or to find... Read more →

Researchers at Texas A&M University and ExxonMobil are developing a method to reprocess petroleum coke—a byproduct of refining crude oil—into graphene, using a chemical process called electrochemical exfoliation. This open-access study was published in NPJ 2D Materials and Applications. Simplified schematic of refinery operations and products: there is a need... Read more →

Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have developed a process for fabricating polytriazole membranes with 10-nanometer-thin selective layers containing subnanometer channels. The membranes, with their ultrathin tunable selective layers, offer an innovative membrane development solution for energy-efficient crude oil fractionation. The membranes are also advantageous for... Read more →

The IEA June 2022 Oil Market Report (OMR) forecasts world oil demand to reach 101.6 mb/d in 2023, surpassing pre-pandemic levels. While higher prices and a weaker economic outlook are moderating consumption increases, a resurgent China will drive gains next year, with growth accelerating from 1.8 mb/d in 2022 to... Read more →

bp has agreed to sell its 50% interest in the Sunrise oil sands project in Alberta, Canada, to Calgary-based Cenovus Energy, the other owner of the Sunrise project. As part of the deal, bp is acquiring Cenovus’s interest in the Bay du Nord project in Eastern Canada, adding to its... Read more →

As demand for new energy sources grows, the wastewater co-produced alongside oil and gas (produced water) shows no signs of slowing down: The current volume of wastewater—the result of water forced underground to fracture rock and release the deposits—is estimated at 250 million barrels per day, compared to 80 million... Read more →

Glencore International pled guilty in the Southern District of New York to violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). In addition, as part of a separate resolution, Glencore Ltd., pled guilty in the District of Connecticut to a commodity price manipulation conspiracy. Together, Glencore and Glencore Ltd., both part... Read more →

Together with its partner Nordic Marine Oil, Neste is piloting a new Neste Marine 0.1 Co-processed marine fuel in Scandinavia, a solution helping the maritime sector to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The ISCC PLUS-certified marine fuel enables up to 80% GHG emission reduction over the lifecycle compared to... Read more →

Parkland, an independent supplier and marketer of fuel and petroleum products and a leading convenience store operator, plans to increase renewable fuel production at its Burnaby Refinery in British Columbia. The company said it will expanding existing co-processing volumes to approximately 5,500 barrels per day, and build a stand-alone renewable... Read more →

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has released the draft 2022 Climate Change Scoping Plan—the third update to the state’s initial 2008 Scoping Plan. It identifies a path to achieve carbon neutrality over the next two decades while also assessing the progress the State is making towards reducing its greenhouse... Read more →

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that US crude oil production will average 11.9 million barrels per day this year and 12.8 million barrels per day in 2023, which would surpass the record average production of 12.3 million barrels per day set in 2019. Despite the increases in production,... Read more →

China processed record amounts of crude oil in 2021 to meet rising domestic consumption of petroleum products, according to analysis by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). In the second half of the year, China processed slightly less crude oil and began exporting significantly less gasoline and diesel than in... Read more →

ExxonMobil has made three new discoveries offshore Guyana and increased its estimate of the recoverable resource for the Stabroek Block to nearly 11 billion oil-equivalent barrels. (Earlier post.) The three discoveries are southeast of the Liza and Payara developments and bring to five the discoveries made by ExxonMobil in Guyana... Read more →

ExxonMobil has made a final investment decision for the Yellowtail development offshore Guyana after receiving government and regulatory approvals. The company’s fourth, and largest, project in the Stabroek Block is expected to produce approximately 250,000 barrels of oil per day starting in 2025. Yellowtail production from the ONE GUYANA floating... Read more →

In an effort to address the rapidly increasing cost of gasoline, President Biden authorized the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day for the next six months—more than 180 million barrels—from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The Biden Administration had earlier in March authorized a drawdown of 30... Read more →

Austria-based OMV, an international, integrated oil, gas and chemicals company, announced its intention to become a net-zero (Scope 1, 2 and 3) company by no later than 2050. In keeping with this strategic shift of business, OMV will reduce its oil and gas production by around 20% by 2030 and... Read more →

The US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) Annual Energy Outlook 2022 (AEO2022) Reference case forecasts that US energy consumption will grow through 2050, primarily driven by population and economic growth. In this case—which reflects only current laws and regulations—renewable energy is the fastest-growing energy source through 2050, while petroleum remains the... Read more →

President Joe Biden issued an executive order banning the importation from Russia of crude oil; petroleum; petroleum fuels, oils, and products of their distillation; liquefied natural gas; coal; and coal products. The ban is effective immediately; the US is blocking any new purchases of Russian energy. The US will allow... Read more →

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) will collaborate with the University of Michigan (UM) to use additive manufacturing and machine learning to create an advanced burner that will eliminate 99.5% of the methane encountered during oil production. SwRI’s Metering Research Facility (MRF) will serve as a test bed for a new ARPA-E... Read more →

ExxonMobil is discontinuing operations at Sakhalin-1, and will make no new investments in Russia. ExxonMobil operates the Sakhalin-1 project on behalf of an international consortium of Japanese, Indian and Russian companies. (Earlier post.) In response to the situation in Ukraine, the company is beginning the process to discontinue operations and... Read more →

The bp board announced that bp will exit its shareholding in Rosneft, a Russian state-controlled oil and gas company. bp has held a 19.75% shareholding in Rosneft since 2013. Additionally, bp chief executive officer Bernard Looney is resigning from the board of Rosneft with immediate effect. The other Rosneft director... Read more →

In 2021, the United States returned to importing more petroleum (which includes crude oil, refined petroleum products, and other liquids) than it exports following its historic shift to being a net exporter of petroleum in 2020, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). According to EIA’s February 2022 Short-Term... Read more →