Industry Guides & How-To Resources with specific types of property or business. Check our valuable guides on this page today at Ranger Land & Minerals.

oil-boom

The double negatives of a demand-culling pandemic and wildly declining sentiment trouncing the oil and gas. It is also pushing companies to record lows, with $30 billion in collective debt, trying to pick a winner in this sector is growing more challenging by the day. Oil boom is really coming.

On the demand front, the IEA has just cut its 2020 oil production forecast by 140,000 BPD to 91.9 million BPD, sending the FTSE 100 index down 73 points, citing the airline industry’s troubles as a key source of weakness in the oil market.

But the megatrend of ESG, or “impact” investing, is the wider threat to the oil and gas industry, with energy stocks finding themselves in the penalty box due to heightened concerns about ever-rising carbon emissions and poor governance. It’s all prompting capital to flee the sector at an unprecedented rate—even faster due to the pandemic.

The energy sector has been the worst performer in the S&P 500, gaining just 34% over the timeframe according to Refinitiv data. And in the three-month period to June, Big Oil posted massive losses as the demand shock set in.

Click here to read the full article.

Source: Oil Price

If you have further questions about Oil Boom, feel free to contact us here.

natural-gas

A growing number of oil and gas companies are looking to measure and reduce their carbon emissions under increased pressure from shareholders to join the fight against climate change – and the result is that the tech industry is starting to get into the oil and gas game.

A growing number of technology companies – from well-established names to start-ups – are now launching carbon emissions tracking and accounting software, Reuters reports.

In June, Germany’s SAP launched a carbon emissions accounting system to help firms manage and reduce their carbon footprint and accelerate the move to sustainable business practices.

Click here to read the full article.

Source: Oil Price

oil industry

Bank of America expects oil prices to recover to $60 a barrel for Brent crude in the first half of next year thanks to shrinking global inventories and prices improving faster than previously expected.

“Back in June, we upped our oil price forecasts by $5 per barrel (/bbl) and argued that Brent would average $43/bbl in 2020 and $50/bbl in 2021,” Bank of America’s analysts said as quoted by Trade Arabia.

However, since then, oil futures have been rising faster than expected even though spot prices remained range-bound, the bank noted. Because of this and because it expects an oil market deficit of 4.9 million BPD for the second half of this year and another of 1.7 million bpd next year, BofA expects prices to shoot up.

The bank’s analysts noted the slump in drilling rigs, notably in the U.S. shale patch, and the OPEC+ oil production cuts as some of the main factors that would push the oil market into a deficit and prop up prices.

However, the demand side remains a downward pressure for prices. The IEA and OPEC were the latest to sound a cautious note in their respective monthly reports. The IEA said it expected oil demand this year to be down 8.1 million bpd from last year, while OPEC estimated a demand loss of 9.1 million bpd this year.

Click here to read the full article.

Source: Oil Price

If you have further questions about the Bank of America oil prices updates, feel free to reach out to us here.

oil-rig-increasing oil price

The market is beginning to give credence to something we’ve been discussing in past years concerning the increasing oil price.

In a June 2020 article entitled, Underinvestment Could Send Oil Prices Soaring, I argued how the retrenchment and lack of capital investment the industry has seen over the past five years would lead to shortages of crude eventually. The huge volume of Saudi overproduction exacerbated the equal largess in American shale for the past couple of years and led to a glut of crude globally.

EIA-WPSR The blue line shows weekly storage numbers beginning to edge back into the five-year range.

We are now starting to work off this glut as noted in the weekly EIA petroleum status report above, and the day of reckoning I forecast in June is just around the corner, a few months hence at most. Even the news in July that OPEC+ would start restoring as much as two-million BOPD through the end of the year, failed to quiet the unease beginning to take hold in the market. News like that would have sent prices into the cellar in May, having left the current contracts above $41 for WTI and near $45 for Brent.

Click here to read the full article.

If you have further questions related to the increasing oil price, feel free to contact us here. 

oil and gas drilling

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) expects to finalize and sign this week new rules about methane emissions for the oil and gas sector, including putting an end to requirements that companies have systems in place to detect methane leaks, senior administration officials told The Wall Street Journal.

The EPA has proposed updating the Obama administration’s rules on methane emissions and detection.

Last year in August, the EPA proposed updates to the air regulations for the oil and gas industry in order to “remove regulatory duplication and save the industry millions of dollars in compliance costs each year – while maintaining health and environmental regulations on oil and gas sources that the agency considers appropriate.”

Click here to read the full article.

Source: Oil Price

Defending the Oil and Gas Industry Against Cyber Threats

The oil and gas industry is one of the most powerful financial sectors in the world, critical to global and national economies. Above all, this industry is a valuable target for adversaries. Therefore for those who are seeking to exploit Industrial Control Systems (ICS) vulnerabilities. That is why defending the oil and gas industry should be of top priority.

As the recent increase in attacks against ICS demonstrates, adversaries with a specific interest in oil and gas companies remain active and are evolving their behaviors. Protection against cyber-attacks is essential to the worldwide economy. What particular challenges does the industry face and how can security teams prevent them?

The Industry’s Basic Structure

The industry has three segments: upstream, midstream, and downstream.

Upstream businesses are concerned with resource exploration and production. These companies explore the globe for reservoirs of raw materials and drill to extract them.

Firstly, midstream businesses are focusing on transportation. Secondly, they are responsible for transporting the extracted raw materials to refineries to process them. Further, these firms oversee the shipping, operating pipelines, and storing of raw materials. Downstream businesses refine the raw materials. They remove impurities and convert the raw materials to products for the public. Examples are gasoline, jet fuel, heating oil, and asphalt.

Click here to read the full article.

Source: Security Intelligence

If you have further questions, most importantly about Defending the Oil and Gas Industry, feel free to reach out to us here.

Gas Utility

Gas utility company Southern California Gas Co is suing the California Energy Commission. It is over the state’s climate policy and attempts to phase out natural gas as a source of heating and cooking.

Southern California Gas Co, owned by Sempra Energy, is trying to shield itself from policy actions. This could ban the hook-up of natural gas for all new homes.

The California Energy Commission, for its part, is promoting building efficiency and emissions-cutting rules for new construction, encouraging home developers to build all-electric buildings in the state.

For example, last year, Berkeley, California, passed an ordinance requiring all new homes to be all-electric. Meaning no gas hook-ups beginning in January 2020. Berkeley’s primary motivation for the gas hook-up ban was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They want to promote the use of clean energy.

Climate activists say that natural gas is a fossil fuel and is responsible for a large part of emissions from buildings, while natural gas companies are pitching natural gas as an affordable and stable ‘bridge’ fuel toward all-renewable electricity generation.

“Natural gas and renewable gas are clean, affordable, resilient, and reliable sources of energy on which millions of California consumers and businesses depend,” Southern California Gas Co said in its lawsuit, as carried by the Los Angeles Times.

 

Click here to read the full article.

Source: Oil Price

If you have further questions related to any Gas Utility entities, feel free to contact us here. 

natural-gas-plant

The pandemic has curtailed associated gas production in the Permian basin, temporarily relieving some gas flaring, but the basin could return to record gas production levels by the end of 2021. By 2023, the rate of gas flaring could increase substantially.

Starting next year, drilling activity begins to resume in the Permian, assuming WTI stays above $45 per barrel, according to Rystad Energy. The increase in drilling leads to more associated gas output. The pandemic has knocked gas production down, but by late 2021, Permian gas production will be back to pre-pandemic levels – and it will continue to rise from there.

Rystad expects gas output to continue to rise, reaching 16 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) by 2023, which, to be sure, is 2 bcf/d below the firm’s prior forecast from earlier this year.

Click here to read the full article.

Source: Oil Price

oil-gas-spending

Spending on oil and gas, and coal is still higher among members of G20 than spending on renewable energy, a data update from the Energy Policy Tracker has revealed. Across the group, since the start of the pandemic, governments had pledged at least $160.95 billion in fossil fuel investments, versus $123.75 billion in renewable energy investment, the tracker, which updates government spending data on energy every week, said. This translates into $35.10 per capita in oil and gas spending, and $26.99 per capita for cleaner energy spending.

Most of the so-called unconditional fossil fuel investment was on oil and gas, unsurprisingly, with just $10.20 billion of the total allocated for coal. While this may sound like ten billion dollars too much to spend on the most polluting fossil fuel, G20 governments also allocated $38.44 billion on unconditional renewable energy. This was, however, the smaller portion of the total renewable energy spending; the bulk was pledged for so-called clean conditional energy, the Energy Policy Tracker said.

Click here to read the full article.

Source: Oil Price

Saudi Arabia Oil

There was a recommendation of the OPEC+ JMMC to ease the oil output cuts by 2 million bbl/d. With that, oil markets maintained their bullish sentiment over the past week. This is as Brent was trading above $43 while WTI was trading above $40. A surge in COVID-19 cases in several counties including the US, Spain, and Australia capped oil price gains.

Bullish figures from the EIA

Markets were primarily supported by a continued withdrawal in commercial crude inventories. This declined by 7.5 million barrels w/w to stand at 531.7 million barrels. Gasoline inventories also declined by 3.1 million barrels w/w reflecting a significant rise in demand levels. Along with the decline in inventories, crude imports fell by 1.83 million bbl/d w/w and are currently standing at 5.57 million bbl/d, which may be part of the reason for the drop in inventories. The other reason for the decline in inventories is the balance in the markets where demand now exceeds supply, something we had anticipated, last April, to take place in July.

We currently expect commercial inventories to continue to decline especially during July and August as these months historically are the peak of driving season. U.S. oil production continues to be fixed at 11 million bbl/d for the 3rd consecutive week. The decline in oil rigs continues, with the latest figure being 1 rig w/w, and it may have already reached its lowest level at around 180 rigs.

Click here to read the full article.

Source: Oil Price

If you have further questions about Saudi Arabia Oil, feel free to reach out to us here.