17 July 2015, The Independent, Iran nuclear deal: Oil majors have already started the scramble to tap the country’s rich resources. The race to exploit Iran’s vast and under-utilised oil and gas reserves has begun after the country struck a crucial deal to curb its nuclear programme in return for relaxing foreign sanctions on its energy and finance industries. Easing the sanctions imposed by the US, the EU and the UN in 2012 paves the way for a massive leap in Iran’s oil and gas production that will require Western production expertise. The Iranian government and the oil majors have been quietly courting each other in the run-up to the agreement, with companies such as BP, Shell, Eni, Statoil and Total all thought to be seriously considering a move into the country. Read More here
Tag Archives: oil
7 July 2015, Bloomberg Business, Refracking Is the New Fracking: The technique itself is nothing new. Oil crews across the world have been schooled on its simple principles for generations: Identify aging, low-output wells and hit them with a blast of sand and water to bolster the flow of crude. The idea originated somewhere in the plains of the American Midwest, back in the 1950s. But as today’s engineers start applying the procedure to the horizontal wells that went up during the fracking boom that swept across U.S. shale fields over the past decade, something more powerful, more financially rewarding is happening. The short life span of these wells, long thought to be perhaps the single biggest weakness of the shale industry, is being stretched out. Early evidence of the effects of restimulation suggests that the fields could actually contain enough reserves to last about 50 years, according to a calculation based on Wood Mackenzie Ltd and ITG Investment Research data. Read More here
12 June 2015, The Carbon Brief, Letting the fox into the chicken coop! UN welcomes oil groups’ help to fight global warming: The UN will accept an unusual offer from six of Europe’s largest oil and gas groups to help it fight global warming as countries work on sealing a new international climate change agreement due in December. The proposal from companies including Royal Dutch Shell and Britain’s BP was “very, very welcome”, the UN’s top climate official, Christiana Figueres, told the Financial Times. Chief executives of the six companies wrote to Figueres in May saying they wanted to help countries devise a global carbon-pricing system ahead of the climate agreement. The move laid bare a transatlantic rift between some of the world’s largest energy groups, after US oil producers, Chevron and ExxonMobil, declined to join. Pilita Clark, Financial Times Read More here
11 June 2015, Energy Post, Canada will find US shale oil revolution hard act to follow:The new edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, just released, reports that the US recorded the largest increase in oil production in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia, thanks to its shale revolution. Can Canada follow the US example now that huge new shale oil deposits have been identified in the country’s remote Northwest Territories? Andrew Topf of Oilprice.com reports that the oil may well be there, but the external conditions are very different from those in the famous Bakken Formation in the US. There are many hurdles to overcome before the Northwest Territories become another Bakken. Read More here