Earlier this month, Royal Dutch Shell Plc pulled the plug on its Convent refinery in Louisiana. Unlike many oil refineries shut in recent years, Convent was far from obsolete: it’s fairly big by U.S. standards and sophisticated enough to turn a wide range of crude oils into high-value fuels. Yet …
Read More »Two-Thirds of Energy Company Employers Cut Labour Costs due to COVID
A survey by energy labour market organization PetroLMI shows that more than two-thirds of the employers in Canada’s oil and gas sector imposed labour cost reduction measures in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, including 37 per cent who enacted permanent layoffs. The division of Energy Safety Canada surveyed …
Read More »Chevron Looks to Biden to Preserve Its Venezuela Foothold
Chevron’s willingness to keep a foothold in oil-rich Venezuela will now be a thorny political issue for President-elect Joe Biden to sort out. The U.S. Treasury Department extended until June 3 its authorization for Chevron to carry out essential transactions in the country to preserve its assets, from a previous …
Read More »OPEC+ Ministers Warn of Continued Oil Demand Fragility
As OPEC+ began talks on whether to postpone January’s oil-production increase, ministers sounded cautious about the strength of global demand. Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said he could see a light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the development of Covid-19 vaccines, but the market had …
Read More »Saudi Aramco Kicks off Jumbo Bond Sale
Saudi Aramco kicked off a jumbo bond sale Tuesday to help fund a $75 billion dividend, returning to the debt markets for the first time since April of last year. The state energy firm is raising debt after slumping crude prices caused profit to fall by 45% in the third …
Read More »India’s Energy Demand on the Path to Recovery
India’s energy demand is poised to bounce back as Asia’s third-largest economy reopens for business, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said. The country’s consumption of petrol, gas oil and cooking gas in October “exceeded the figures of last year”, said Mr Pradhan during the online Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and …
Read More »Nord Stream 2 Sanctions to be Included in U.S. Defense Bill
House and Senate negotiators have reached an agreement to include additional sanctions against a gas pipeline between Russia and Germany in a must-pass defense bill, according to three people familiar with the matter. The sanctions against Gazprom PJSC’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline would target insurance and certification companies that work …
Read More »Oil Prices are Only Going in One Direction
This was supposed to be a time when things were getting closer to normal for OPEC. A recovery in oil demand after the first wave of the pandemic, coupled with a deep slump in U.S. production, was meant to leave the world needing more of its members’ crude. But it …
Read More »OPEC+ Inches Closer to Delaying Output Hike after Russian Talks
OPEC+ inched closer to delaying its January output increase, with Russia actively discussing keeping its current curbs for an extra three months as oil markets weaken. The producer group has been dropping hints for weeks that its plan to add almost 2mn barrels a day to oil markets next year …
Read More »Trump Issues Executive Order on Fracking
Trump will issue an executive order to require an economic analysis of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, as the president seeks to use what he portrays as Biden’s mixed messages on energy to woo voters in the swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The order calls for U.S. agencies to analyze …
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