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oil industry news venezuela

Can Venezuela’s Oil Industry Really Rebound?

There are signs that the crisis engulfing Venezuela’s shattered petroleum industry could start to ease. In a recent televised address, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro stated that Venezuela was open for oil investment from the U.S. and around the world. That coupled with earlier plans to open the Latin American country’s state-controlled petroleum industry to private control of some petroleum projects has sparked a flurry of interest in the near-failed state.

These events have triggered considerable speculation that representatives of foreign energy companies are traveling to Caracas to explore the opportunities that exist in Venezuela’s broken energy sector. The petroleum-rich Latin American country is endowed with the world’s largest oil reserves, totaling 304 billion barrels, with many existing oilfields currently inactive because of PDVSA’s lack of resources. Those characteristics indicate there are considerable opportunities for foreign energy companies, especially if Maduro, as rumored, is willing to provide them with proprietary control of energy assets.

A Reuter’s January 2021 article highlighted that small domestic oilfield contractors were meeting with Venezuelan officials to discuss operating fields owned by national oil company PDVSA in exchange for receiving a share of the profits.

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Source: Oil Price

oil majors

Oil Majors Concern | Is Natural Gas Still A Safe Bet?

Increased scrutiny over the environmental impact of natural gas—a key source of methane, which is a much more harmful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide—has some industry analysts questioning the long-term prospects of global gas demand in the energy transition.

Big Oil has bet big on natural gas developments in the past decade, expecting incessant growth in demand for decades to come. Today, the majors continue to expect solid demand for natural gas, justifying investments in more production.

But investors and buyers of natural gas have started to fret over the emissions impact of the fuel.

This could create risks for the biggest oil and gas corporations, including Shell, Total, and ExxonMobil, according to Sarah McFarlane of The Wall Street Journal.

Those three supermajors and many other oil and gas companies have bet big on growing their natural gas divisions to meet what they see as continued growth in global gas demand.

The net-zero and energy transition narrative, however, has changed the overall narrative in the gas industry—buyers want net-zero cargoes, while producers and sellers pledge carbon capture and reduction of methane emissions.

Natural gas demand will continue to grow in the coming years, after fully recouping this year the losses from the 2020 pandemic shock, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said earlier this year.

Asia is set to continue leading that growth, while many Western markets, including the European Union (EU), will start to pay more attention to the environmental credentials of natural gas.

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Source: Oil Price

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offshore-oil-gas-spending

Offshore Oil & Gas Spending Set To Jump To $44 Billion In 2021

Last year is the lowest spending on new field developments in 30 years. The offshore oil and gas sector is set to increase capital expenditures significantly.

Upstream oil & gas spending will to surge to around US$44 billion this year. This is in comparison to just US$12.3 billion. It is worth of engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contracts awarded in 2020. In 2019, before the pandemic hit oil demand and prices, the EPC contracts in the industry were around US$40 billion.

“In 2021, we will see a significant uptick in activity”. This is what Thom Payne, Head of Offshore at Westwood Global Energy Group said at Riviera Maritime Media’s Annual Offshore Support Journal virtual conference and exhibition on Wednesday.

Most of this year’s capital expenditure and the biggest EPC contracts will go to major natural gas projects offshore Australia and deepwater oil project developments offshore South America.

The significant increase in 2021 will also help the offshore rig and support vessel markets this year, Payne said at the conference. It is part of which will come from the deferred spending in 2020.

Payne is mentioning in an analysis that offshore investment is set for a rapid rebound this year. It is through a deferral of projects from 2020 and a “resurgent Petrobras.”

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Source: Oil Price

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Big Oil hottest prospects

Big Oil’s Hottest Prospects In 2021

Judging by the first 3 months of 2021 it seems that this year has gone off to a wrong start. Instead of economic rebounds, we face the third rendition of a market slump. Nevertheless, 2021 will become much more prolific in oil discoveries than 2020. Many of the wildcats initially planned for 2020 were moved to the next year. It is for financial or health security reasons. All the while, some new frontier areas were opened up only very recently. With that 2021 will see its natural continuation there. Several wells have already been spudded, for instance the early top-5 contender Perseverance-1 (prospective resources of 770 MMbbls) spudded in the offshore zone of the Bahamas has encountered oil, however, in non-commercial volumes. Read more about Big Oil hottest prospects below.

In Latin/South America, besides the Bahamian dry Perseverance prospect, many hopes were in a pin to the continuation of drilling in the Guyana/Suriname Basin. Despite clinching a total of 18 discoveries within the Stabroek Block, ExxonMobil’s drilling programme has been disappointing lately.

First, the Tanager-1 well (although this was on the Kaieteur block to the north of Stabroek) turned out to be dry in November 2020, then Hassa-1 wildcat “did not encounter hydrocarbons in the primary target reservoirs” in January 2021 and now Bulletwood-1 (Canje Block) ended up being non-commercial. Guyana will still have an opportunity to bounce back in 2021 with the Kawa-1 wildcat,

However, it seems that if the basin is to wield any significant discoveries. There will be a location change in Suriname’s offshore where several high-potential wells are on schedule for this year. Most notably the  Goliethburg-Voltzberg North-1.

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Source: Oil Price

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gas-drilling and energy transition

Energy Transition Leads To Higher Oil Prices, Metals Shortage

According to a World Bank report, 3 billion tons of metals and minerals is the requirement for the energy transition.  Demand for some of these, such as copper, lithium, cobalt, and graphite. According to the same report, it is set to increase 500 percent by 2050. Copper which is the market for some of them is already near a deficit.

Copper prices are close to record highs last seen in 2011. One analyst at least expects demand to exceed supply before this year’s end. Demand, Natalie Scott-Gray from StoneX said last month, as quoted by Mining.com, will rise by 5 percent this year while supply will only inch up by 2.3 percent. The longer-term problem is that additional supply takes time to come.

“We see the use of electric vehicles, wind farms and solar requires up to five times the amount of copper,” Jeremy Weir, chief executive of Trafigura, said at this year’s edition of CERAWeek, as quoted by Reuters. “You can’t turn on the switch and produce more copper.”

Weir added that copper mines take between five and ten years to develop, which means a tighter supply in the observable future. The situation is similar to other minerals that are essential for the energy transition. Cobalt prices are on the rise, too, at the moment, because of expectations that supply will tighten due to rising demand. And Tesla’s Elon Musk recently inked a deal to make the company a technical adviser at the Goro mine in New Caledonia to secure its long-term nickel supply—another key battery metal.

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Source: Oil Price

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oil-drilling

Kern Supervisors Ready Plan to Allow Thousands of New Oil Wells

After a state appeals court blocked Kern County’s supervisors effort to speed up new oil and gas drilling, officials overseeing the state’s prime oil patch have revised an ordinance that could permit tens of thousands of new wells over the next 15 years.

The Kern County Board of Supervisors is poised to vote Monday on the plan that would streamline the permitting process by creating a blanket environmental impact report for drilling as many as 2,700 wells a year.

While the petroleum industry supports the changes, environmentalists and community groups have said the plan has barely changed and doesn’t address violations of the California Environmental Quality Act.

The 5th District Court of Appeal in Fresno last year found the 2015 plan violated the law by not fully evaluating or disclosing environmental damage that would occur from drilling.

“They’re attempting this huge end-around of this fundamental environmental protection,” said attorney Hollin Kretzmann of the Center for Biological Diversity. “If you drill a well in Kern County, you’re going to get a rubber-stamp permit.”

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Source: Gvwire

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offshore-rig

Why Big Oil Expects Record Cash Flow In 2021

The world’s largest oil companies are set for a cash flow bonanza this year, probably at record levels, as massive cost cuts in the wake of the 2020 oil price and oil demand collapse have significantly lowered the corporate cash flow breakevens for many firms.

After posting record losses in 2020, a year which company executives described as one with “the most challenging market conditions,” Big Oil is looking at 2021 with increased optimism, mostly because oil prices have rallied in recent weeks. Moreover, the ultra-conservative capital spending plans and the huge cost cuts have allowed international oil companies (IOCs) to materially lower their cash flow breakevens.

These factors are set to result in a record cash flow for the biggest oil firms this year if oil prices average $55 per barrel, Wood Mackenzie said in new research.

Currently, investment banks largely believe that a tightening oil market, easy monetary policies from governments to boost economies, and oil as a hedge against inflation for investors would lead to oil prices averaging around $60 a barrel this year, with possible spikes to $70 and even $75 before or during the summer.

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Source: Oil Price

Abandoned Oil Wells

Abandoned Oil Wells – Can it Be Used To Generate Geothermal Power?

“The decade of geothermal” is a phrase that is becoming increasingly common in media and energy industry gatherings. This is as the international zero-emission comes into place. It includes one of the most fascinating and clean ways of extracting energy from the earth. It is through geothermal power. Let’s talk more about abandoned oil wells now.

Geothermal companies need to drill—and they need to drill deep. This is to reach the heat that the mantle of the Earth radiates into the core. In fact, one of the biggest challenges for this emerging industry is drilling deep enough to get to the really high temperatures: drilling so deep is risky and costly.

Yet geothermal can do pretty well even at smaller depths. According to a recent analysis by Rystad Energy, to generate electricity from the vaporized water heated up in geothermal wells, a power generation facility needs temperatures of 240 to 300 degrees Celsius. The analysis adds that as much as 70 percent of geothermal output right now is useable for electricity generation.

Indeed, with the urge to electrify everything—whether this is wise or not—it’s all about electricity and, more specifically, emission-free electricity. Geothermal is perfect for this: while the drilling of a geothermal well does involve equipment that uses fossil fuels, from a lifetime perspective, geothermal is fully comparable with wind and solar, which are also not entirely emission-free given the materials they need to operate.

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Source: Oil Price

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refinery

Texas Refinery Restarts Could Take Until April

The restart of Shell’s Deer Park refinery in Texas could take until April, Reuters has reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the issue.

A spokesman for the company told Reuters no timeline has been set for the refinery’s return to normal operation.

Shell shut down the two crude processing units at the 318,000-bpd refinery in the middle of this month, before the cold spell that hit Texas’ energy industry and shut down several other refineries as well, because of a pump seal malfunction.

Then the Arctic blast hit, and the supermajor shut down the rest of the refinery’s operations. The cold wave shut down more than 6 million bpd in refining capacity in the Lone Star state, according to calculations from IHS Markit. It also took down 4 million barrels in daily oil production capacity.

Exxon is also taking its time in restarting two units at its Baytown refinery, according to a Reuters report citing unnamed sources from the company.

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Source: Oil Price

Photo: File

oil-offshore Goldman Sachs Forecast

Goldman Sachs Forecast | Sees $75 Oil In Q3 2021

Goldman Sachs had a forecast and is now even more bullish on oil. It is expecting Brent Crude prices to hit $75 a barrel in the third quarter this year. On the back of faster market rebalancing, the lower expectation on inventories and traders is still hedging against inflation.

The investment bank’s analysts forecast Brent Crude prices reaching the $70 a barrel mark. This is during the second quarter of this year. Moreoever, it is now and hitting $75 in the third quarter. With that, Goldman Sachs is thus lifting its previous Q2 and Q3 forecasts by $10 per barrel.

“Faster re-balancing during the dark days of winter will be followed by a widening deficit this spring as the ramp-up in OPEC+ production lags our above-consensus demand recovery forecast,” said Goldman Sachs.

“We further believe that this additional rally receives full support by the current repositioning for a reflationary environment with investors turning to oil, buying a lagging real asset that benefits from a stimulus-driven recovery and has demonstrated an unmatched ability to hedge against inflation shocks,” the analysts noted.

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Source: Oil Price

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