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Schlumberger in $300 million deal offshore Australia
More than $300 million in contracts for the upstream side of the energy sector goes toward developing offshore Australia, a division of Schlumberger said. Schlumberger subsidiary OneSubsea secured an engineering contract from Australian company Woodside to help develop the Greater Enfield project off the northwest coast of the country. Woodside said breakthroughs in technology slated for Greater Enfield made investing nearly $2 billion during the weak market for oil justifiable. The Australian energy company is targeting a basin that holds up to 69 million barrels of oil equivalent, which will be developed using an offshore floating production, storage and offloading vessel. The investment plan for Enfield came in at the low end of its expectations, which gave the company […]
China’s Oil Output Tanks , Hits 4 Year Low
China Imports China’s crude oil output over the first half of the year stood at 101.59 million metric tons, down 4.6 percent and the lowest six-month figure since 2012, Bloomberg reports . The decline reflects China’s stated shift from an industry-focused economic model to a more service-oriented one. It is also related to a drive by the government to cut the country’s environmental footprint, struggling with a reputation of China as one of the most polluted places on earth. Low oil prices were also a factor in the production trend. In June alone, China pumped 8.9 percent less crude than a year earlier, with state-owned giants such as PetroChina and CNOOC shuttering unprofitable fields and turning to low-cost imports instead. Crude oil imports in January-June jumped 14 percent, China’s national Bureau of Statistics said, with June recording the weakest growth. The trend is seen to continue: an analyst from […]
As China’s Economy Slows, Beijing’s Growth Push Loses Punch
Mo Ping for years made his living by tending the mango and jujube trees that he grew on less than an acre on this tip of land in the far south of China. Then last year Mr. Mo and others in his village near the city of Leizhou received what they considered a lowball offer to sell their land to make way for a $1.5 billion coal-fired power plant. Most rejected it, but the local government sent in bulldozers anyway. “There were several hundred police on the scene, and they wouldn’t allow us to get anywhere near the farm,” said Mr. Mo, a 51-year-old with dirt caked under his close-trimmed fingernails. “My heart ached and I cried because I was really upset.” The coal plant is part of a huge and expensive government push to reinvigorate the Chinese economy. Officials have fast-tracked the plant in recent […]
Alaskans Brace for Spending Cuts as Oil Prices Tumble
The impact of falling oil prices in Alaska, which has seemed for many residents like a distant worry until now, is about to land. The turning point came on Friday, when the State House of Representatives, meeting at the Capitol in Juneau in the fifth special session since last summer, failed to override a line-item veto of the budget by Gov. Bill Walker. That means the $1.3 billion in spending cuts imposed last month by Mr. Walker, a political independent, will almost certainly take effect on top of cuts that lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Legislature had already agreed on.
Is Oil Going Back Under $40?
In recent weeks the oil market has seen negative sentiment drive prices lower based on expectations of heightened output (some of which have been realized) from recent problem areas including Canada, Nigeria and Libya while refining margins have collapsed and Brexit has added to macro/demand concerns. Over the last two months speculators have trimmed net length by 32 percent in NYMEX WTI and reduced net length in ICE Brent by 21 percent. During WTI’s rally from $26.05 to $51.67 many traders assumed that a gasoline demand boom and falling non-OPEC+Russia production would accelerate a clearing of the global crude supply overhang and lead to higher prices. Instead, traders are looking at a more negative macro picture, a global glut of gasoline is weighing on the entire complex and fear of another move into the $30s is gaining momentum. • In our view, however, a protracted move […]
