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IEA warns of ever-growing reliance on Middle Eastern oil supplies
The world risks becoming ever more reliant on Middle Eastern oil as lower prices derail efforts by governments to curb demand, the west’s leading energy body has warned. The head of the International Energy Agency told the Financial Times that Middle Eastern producers, such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq, now have the biggest share of worldoil markets since the Arab fuel embargo of the 1970s. Demand for their crude has surged amid a collapse in oil prices over the past two years that has cut output from higher-cost producers such as the US, Canada and Brazil.
U.S. crude oil exports hit record 662,000 bpd in May: Census Bureau
U.S. crude oil exports rose to a record 662,000 barrels per day in May from 591,000 bpd in April, foreign trade data from the U.S. Census Bureau showed on Wednesday. Canada accounted for the most U.S. crude exports at 308,000 bpd, followed by the Netherlands at 110,000 bpd and Curacao at 67,000 bpd. Other prominent destinations were Britain at 36,000 bpd, Japan at 29,000 bpd and Italy at 23,000 bpd. The total export figure was the highest on record since at least 1920, according to U.S. government data. U.S. oilexports have risen since a decades-long ban on them was lifted in January. During that time, a number of merchants, traders, producers and even refiners have moved crude to Latin America, Europe, Asia and other locations. The Census Bureau publishes its oilexport […]
Cruel summer for U.S. refiners as margins tank
Summer driving season is in full swing and American motorists are filling their tanks at a healthy clip, but that is not swelling the profit margins as much as usual at U.S. independent oil refiners such as PBF Energy Inc ( PBF.N ) and Valero Energy Corp. ( VLO.N ) In April, executives shrugged off the industry’s lousy first quarter as an aberration that would be remedied this summer. “We still are bullish gasoline and bullish octane,” PBF CEO Tom Nimbley told investors in an earnings call back then. “The driving season really hasn’t hit that hard yet.” Nimbley was right about the surging summer demand. But refiner margins are still being squeezed as gasoline and diesel inventories stubbornly sit well above five-year averages. Summer gasoline demand usually fattens margins for refiners with seasonally high levels […]
Alberta oil sands producers will eye new projects at $55-$60/b WTI: execs
Investments in additional oil sands production capacity in Alberta will be boosted with a WTI price hovering between $55/b and $60/b even as producers spare no effort to reduce their capital costs, executives said Wednesday. “It is still tough out there, but in the past year we have dropped operating and capital costs by 17% and 30%, respectively, with our focus still being on consolidation and optimization,” Lyle Stevens, Canadian Natural Resources executive vice president, told the 2016 TD Securities Energy Calgary Conference. CNR is adding 23,000 b/d of oil equivalent of heavy and light oil output in Western Canada over the coming six months at a cost of C$17,000 ($13,120)/flowing barrel and is also three months away from adding 45,000 b/d of bitumen output at its Horizon facility in northern Alberta, he said. Flowing barrel costs include construction costs and sustaining capital and operating expenditure. “We’re feeling a […]
Bill Gates And Other Billionaires Backing A Nuclear Renaissance
Let’s for a second imagine a world without nuclear energy. That’s a tough one but let’s try. No nuclear bombs, of course, no Chernobyl and Fukushima, no worries about Iran and North Korea. A wonderful world, maybe? Probably not, because without nuclear energy we would have burned millions more tons of coal and billions more barrels of oil. This would have brought about climate change of such proportions that what we have today would have seemed negligible. Nuclear energy and uranium, which feeds it, are controversial enough even without any actual accident happening. Radioactivity is dangerous. Nobody is arguing against it. When an accident does take place, the public backlash is understandably huge. What many opponents of uranium forget to mention, however, are the benefits of nuclear energy and the fact that the statistical probability of serious accidents is pretty low. They focus on the “What if?” and neglect […]
